imagine… - Season 11

First aired: 10/23/2007 12 episodes

Episodes

1. Henry Perkins: Bolshoi Boy

Aired: 10/23/2007

New series of the documentary strand. Profile of 88-year-old author and winner of the 2007 Nobel Prize for Literature, Doris Lessing. Alan Yentob meets Doris to discuss her literary output as well as her work with the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. They also talk about her communist beliefs and how they help shape her books.

2. Bollywood's Big B

Aired: 10/30/2007

Investigation into the profound impact music can have on the human brain. Alan Yentob investigates case studies from neurologist Dr Oliver Sacks' latest book Musicophillia, including a man who developed a passion for piano playing after being struck by lightning and a man whose severe Tourettes disappears when he plays the drums

3. Helvetica

Aired: 11/6/2008

As the popular typeface celebrates its 50th birthday, Imagine screens a shorter version of the witty film by Gary Hustwit about the history of the Swiss-designed “Kate Moss of fonts”.

4. Louise Bourgeois: Spiderwoman

Aired: 11/13/2007

Alan Yentob presents a profile of the provocative French-born American artist Louise Bourgeois, who was still producing cutting edge work at the age of 95. Memories of a disturbed childhood have produced fantastic and disturbing sculptures of giant spiders and poured-plastic body parts. As a girl she restored old tapestries, worked with Leger and knew surrealists like Breton and Duchamp. In New York she emerged as an artist in her own right, bringing dread, desire, sex and the psyche into her work. Yentob goes to a Sunday salon at her New York home where young artists queue up to get her often fiery reactions to their work. He talks with Tracey Emin, Antony Gormley, Stella Vine and others who have been inspired by this strange and mischievous artist.

5. How to Get on in the Art World

Aired: 11/20/2007

Alan Yentob travels to Los Angeles to meet acclaimed director, screenwriter and producer Werner Herzog. The pair discuss Herzog's career to date, including films such as Rescue Dawn, Grizzly Man and Fitzcarraldo - one of several projects that saw him working with eccentric actor Klaus Kinski. They also talk about what the future might hold for a man known to be uncompromising in his search for the truth.

7. Richard Rogers: Inside Out

Aired: 2/26/2008

Alan Yentob traces the career of Richard Rogers, uncovering the influences that have produced some of the greatest landmarks in modern architecture.

10. Richard Serra: Man of Steel

Aired: 11/25/2008

Sculptor and giant of modern art Richard Serra discusses his extraordinary life and work. A creator of enormous, immediately identifiable steel sculptures that both terrify and mesmerise, Serra believes that each viewer creates the sculpture for themselves by being within it. To this end, a Japanese family are reminded of the Temples of Kyoto, a Londoner finds sanctuary in the Serra near Liverpool Street station, and most movingly, a Holocaust survivor sees one piece as a wall separating the living from the dead. Contributors include Chuck Close, Philip Glass and Glenn D Lowry, Director of MoMA.

13. Show 3

Aired: 11/6/2007

Internationally-renowned photographer Annie Leibovitz, who has captured famous faces from Demi Moore through Yoko Ono to the Queen, is the subject of this intimate profile by her sister Barbara. Always controversial, the last 12 months have seen the American at the heart of two scandals - 15-year-old Disney star Miley Cyrus pictured in just a sheet, and the Queen in the infamous storming-out episode.

16. Love, Loss and Anthony Minghella

Aired: 7/8/2008

Alan Yentob is joined by a distinguished list of contributors including Nicole Kidman, Jude Law, Alan Rickman and Ralph Fiennes to pay tribute to Academy Award-winning director Anthony Minghella, director of films including The English Patient and Cold Mountain, who died suddenly in March aged 54. A Special tribute program added to the series 13 run.

17. A Love Story

Aired: 10/21/2008

What makes a great love story? Imagine looks at the great books, films and pop songs that have tackled the thorny issue of love, pain and desire. Lancelot and Guinevere, Wuthering Heights, Pride and Prejudice, Lady Chatterley's Lover, 24 hours from Tulsa, Casablanca, Brief Encounter and Lolita are all great love stories. But what makes them special? 'A great love story has to have a fly in the ointment', according to Pulitzer prize winner Jeffrey Eugenides. Other contributors include best selling authors Sarah Waters, Helen Fielding, Jane Austen's biographer Claire Tomalin, Burt Bacharach's lyricist Hal David, screen doctor Robert McKee, psychoanalyst Adam Phillips and literature professor John Sutherland.

18. Jay-Z: He Came, He Saw, He Conquered

Aired: 10/28/2008

Alan Yentob explores the life and work of the chart topping rapper and multi-millionaire businessman Jay-Z. With an exclusive insight into his world Yentob accompanies Jay-Z for six months, including the build up to his triumphant headline gig at Glastonbury and backstage access to his concerts in Los Angeles, Las Vegas and New York. Jay-Z also talks in depth about his other passions, which include modern art, architecture, politics, sports and fashion.

19. Let There Be Light

Aired: 11/11/2008

Alan Yentob explores the work of artists whose primary medium is light. On his trip down the light fantastic, Alan encounters material from outer space, solid light sculptures, paintings made by the sun and an extinct volcano that has been turned into a temple of perception by the legendary American artist James Turrell.