Mike Dibb

Appalachian Journey is one of five films made from footage that Alan Lomax shot between 1978 and 1985 for the PBS American Patchwork series (1991). It offers songs, dances, stories, and religious rituals of the Southern Appalachians. Preachers, singers, fiddlers, banjo pickers, moonshiners, cloggers, and square dancers recount the good times and the hard times of rural life there. Performers include Tommy Jarrell, Janette Carter, Ray and Stanley Hicks, Frank Proffitt Jr., Sheila Kay Adams, Nimrod Workman and Phyllis Boyens, Raymond Fairchild, and others, with a bonus of a few African-Americans from the North Carolina Piedmont.

Bette Davis talks with Joan Bakewell and members of the audience at the National Film Theatre, London.

From 1978 to 1985 Alan Lomax traveled the American South and Southwest with a television crew to document regional folklore with deep historical roots. From the resulting 400 hours of footage came the five-program series American Patchwork, which aired on PBS in 1991.

Film Essay based on “And Our Faces, My Heart, Brief As Photos” by John Berger.

Recording of the actor in conversation with Joan Bakewell at the National Film Theatre, London.

Talking with Michael Parkinson and members of the audience at the National Film Theatre, London. An informal discussion illustrated with extracts from some of his most famous films: Champion (1949), Ace in the Hole (1951), Paths of Glory (1958), Lonely are the Brave (1962), In Harm's Way (1965), The Arrangement (1970).

This documentary features acclaimed Chicagoan broadcaster and Pulitzer Prize winner Studs Terkel talking about the value of oral history and the voice of ordinary working Americans.

Art, politics and motorcycles - on the occasion of his 90th birthday John Berger or the Art of Looking is an intimate portrait of the writer and art critic whose ground-breaking work on seeing has shaped our understanding of the concept for over five decades. The film explores how paintings become narratives and stories turn into images, and rarely does anybody demonstrate this as poignantly as Berger.

John Berger's Ways of Seeing changed the way people think about painting and art criticism. This watershed work shows, through word and image, how what we see is always influenced by a whole host of assumptions concerning the nature of beauty, truth, civilization, form, taste, class and gender. Exploring the layers of meaning within oil paintings, photographs and graphic art, Berger argues that when we see, we are not just looking - we are reading the language of images.

Oliver Walston investigates his mother Catherine's 20-year relationship with the writer Graham Greene, which gave rise to Greene's famous novel The End of the Affair, twice adapted as a feature film. The documentary follows the second film during its production, where screenwriter/director Neil Jordan and stars Ralph Fiennes and Julianne Moore offer their personal perspectives on the novel's continuing resonance.

For over forty years, virtuoso saxophonist/composer Barbara Thompson has been Britain's most brilliant and best-known female jazz musician. But in 1997, the same year that she received an MBE for her services to music, disaster struck. Barbara was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease. This is the story of Barbara's inspiring and creative struggle with this disease, whose physical effects are particularly cruel, and visible, in the life of an improvising jazz musician.

Actor Rex Harrison talks entertainingly about his long stage and screen career with David Lewin and members of the audience of the National Film Theatre.

Stephen Frears and a quartet of film industry notables - representing different cinematic periods - drink tea and discuss ups and downs of British cinema.

Short film, going behind-the-scenes of shooting for One Plus One (1968) in London, featuring an interview with Godard sitting beside a tree. Many crew members from this shoot were then borrowed by him, playing the press in the film's Eve Democracy sequence. Originally broadcast on the BBC programme 'Release' (30th Nov. '68).

A film based on Beyond a Boundary, the classic book by C. L. R. James,

Edward Said, Professor of English & Comparative Literature at Columbia University, was a prominent literary critic of the late 20th century and a leading spokesperson for the Palestinian cause in the US. Born to a Palestinian family in Al-Quds (Jerusalem) in 1935, he and his family were dispossessed in 1948 and settled in Cairo. Educated in the US, he lived in New York for many years. Said was a member of the Palestine National Council. After resigning from the PNC in 1991, Said wrote critically about the post-Oslo peace process, the political failures of Yasser Arafat and the PLO. Said was diagnosed with leukemia in 1991 and struggled with the disease while continuing to write and teach. He stopped giving interviews but made an exception less than a year before his death in 2003, speaking about his illness, work, Palestine, politics, life, and education. The last interview is the final testament of this passionately committed intellectual.

An interview with film director Roman Polanski, recorded for BBC TV in 1967.

“Parting Shots from Animals” was inspired by essays by John Berger and developed in collaboration with Chris Rawlence. Shot entirely in the UK, it consists of a diverse series of arresting ‘films within a film’, each presented as if made about us from the perspective of the animals whose lives we may appear to celebrate, but continue to exploit and to destroy. While John Berger doesn’t appear in the film and wasn’t directly involved in it’s making, he narrates to great effect the text he co-wrote to accompany the film’s provocative opening sequence.

A short film Mike Dibb directed for the BBC in July 1968 in Cowdray Park, where Godard was shooting a sequence with the Rolling Stones for ONE PLUS ONE. It was broadcast on BBC2 within the framework of the arts magazine RELEASE on the 30 November 1968 to coincide with the screening (which has become famous…) of ONE PLUS ONE at the London Film Festival.

A documentary portrait of one of the world's superstars of Jazz, pianist Keith Jarrett, exploring his life and work.