Parky at the Pictures (In Cinemas 21/12/2017)

In truth, 2017 has been a disappointing year for actuality. Dochouse continues to unearth intriguing titles that fail to find distributors and it's a shame that its operations are limited to London. But too few films like Pat Collins's Song of Granite have done much to advance the form by breaking away from the tried-and-trusted blend of archive footage and talking heads. Acclaimed artist Ai Weiwei attempted something different in Human Flow, but often proved a distracting presence in this otherwise laudable treatise on the migration crisis. Yet, with so many important topics needing to be tackled, the highest profile documentarists haven't always responded with alacrity or clarity and it's to be hoped that they rise to the challenge of speaking truth to power in the coming months.

Before we reveal the year's Top 10 documentaries, let's remind ourselves of some of the other notable titles that can probably be found somewhere on disc and download if you missed them on the big screen.

Among the better history lessons are Zeva Oelbaum and Sabine Krayenbühl's Letters From Baghdad and Fiona Murphy's Remember Baghdad, while recent events in Egypt come under scrutiny in Tamer El Said's In the Last Days of the City and Sara Taksler's Tickling Giants. Memories of the Holocaust are sensitively handled in Claire Ferguson's Destination Unknown, while Barak and Tomer Heymann offer troubling insights into Israeli attitudes to homosexuality in Who's Gonna Love Me Now?

The pick of the profiles were Randall Wright's Summer in the Forest (about L'Arche founder Jean Vanier), Daniel Draper's Dennis Skinner: Nature of the Beast and Peter Bratt's Dolores (about labour campaigner Dolores Huerta), while plenty of questions were thrown up by ensemble studies like Steve James's Abacus: Small Enough to Jail, Jarius Mclear's The Work and Federica Di Giacomo's Liberami. The latter pair were particularly provocative and, in this regard, stand alongside Shaul Schwarz and Christina Clusiau's thorny tract on conservation and big game hunting, Trophy. Staying in Africa, Julia Dahr examined one mans battle against climate change in Thank You For the Rain, while Slavko Martinov ruffled feathers with his exposé of New Zealand's prize poultry business in Pecking Order.

Staying on the side of leisure, Australian Jennifer Peedom continued her vertiginous trilogy with Mountain, while decent double bills could be made of Roger Donaldson's McLaren and Morgan Matthews's Williams, and Mike Todd's and Shankly: Nature's Fire and Daniel Gordon's George Best: All By Himself. While Best's problems were partly of his own making, Clay Tweed reveals how American footballer Steven Gleason has responded to being diagnosed with motor neurone disease in Gleason, while Jennifer Brea shares her experience of coping with chronic fatigue syndrome in Unrest.

Antonio Santini and Dan Sickles explore love on the neurodiversity spectrum in Dina, while Mark Cousins considers guilt and city planning in Stockholm My Love. Elsewhere, Damien Manivel observes the passing scene in Le Parc, Neasa Ni Chianain and David Rane celebrate the achievements of a couple of veteran teachers in School Life, Jonathan Olshefski hangs with a black Philadelphian family in Quest, and Sierra Pettengill and Pacho Velez reflect on the packaging of a president in The Reagan Show.

Given the access the pair had to the archives of White House TV, this felt like something of a missed opportunity. The same has to be true of Alan G. Parker's It Was Fifty Years Ago Today! The Beatles: Sgt Pepper and Beyond, which attempted to mark the 50th anniversary of a landmark album without having the rights to any of the music. The poor quality of the talking-head contributions only emphasised the cackhanded opportunism of the entire project, which is the runaway winner of the Turkey of the Year award.

Striking far fewer bum notes, the remaining musical highlights include Christine Franz's Bunch of Kunst (Sleaford Mods), Kasper Collin's I Called Him Morgan (jazz trumpeter Lee Morgan), Nick Broomfield's Whitney: Can I Be Me (Whitney Houston), Michael Winterbottom's On the Road (Wolf Alice), Rob Curry and Tim Plester's The Ballad of Shirley Collins, German Kral's Our Last Tango (about Argentine dancers Maria Nieves Rego and Juan Carlos Copes) and Lucy Walker's maligned Buena Vista Social Club: Adios.

Finally, a pair of profiles of combat photographers - Kirsten Johnson's Cameraperson and Harold Monfils's A Good Day to Die, Hoka Hey - lead off an arts slate that also contains Matt Tyrnauer's Citizen Jane: Battle for the City (about urban activist Jane Jacobs), Tim Marrinan and Richard Dewey's Burden (about radical artist Chris Burden), Jon Nguyen, Olivia Neergaard-Holm and Rick Barnes's self-explanatory David Lynch: The Art Life, and Michael Roberts's entertaining snapshot of Manolo Blahnik, Manolo: The Boy Who Made Shoes for Lizards. Also worthy of mention are Phil Grabsky and David Bickerstaffe, who have delivered another fine selection of Exhibition on Screen entries on limited budgets to tight schediles. Bravo!

10) GRACE JONES: BLOODLIGHT AND BAMI.

The product of an often unhappy and occasionally abusive childhood in Kingston, Jamaica and Syracuse, New York, Grace Jones has always since insisted on being in control. The public image of the aloof, mercurial glamazon has been consciously designed to generate a sense of enigmatic mystique. But it also serves to keep intruders at bay and, despite several years of unique access, documentarist Sophie Fiennes struggles to get past the façade in Grace Jones: Bloodlight and Bami. Taking its subtitle from the patois for the red light in a recording studio and a type of flatbread, this veers away from the conventional blend of archive clips and talking heads. But, while there are fleeting moments of intimacy, this seemingly subversive approach restricts Fiennes to an observational role that allows Jones to reveal only what she chooses about her private life and her diverse career.

The opening credits roll over two intercut performances of `Slave to the Rhythm', one of which features Jones in a golden mask with a flowing cape, while the other has her hula-hooping in a black basque with her eyes peering out through a delicate golden lattice. All of the live performances were specially staged in Dublin and the crowd sound their approval before Jones greets some fans outside a theatre (but seemingly one in the United States). She signs autographs and responds politely to the worshipful prattle before hopping on a plane back to Jamaica.

She greets her mother Marjorie with a new banana-coloured hat that she can't wait to get home to open. Slipping into the local patois, Jones enjoys a grilled fish supper with her family and they reminisce about Marjorie marrying young and having plenty of babies and this history is reflected in the lyrics of 'Williams Blood', which recalls Marjorie's life `keeping up with the Jonses' in Spanish Town. The live rendition segues into `Amazing Grace', which links in with the fact that Jones's father was a clergyman and that her mother is still a regular churchgoer, even though she is very much a non-believer.

While it's impossible to put a date to the footage, the sessions for Hurricane took place in 2008, some two decades after Jones had vowed never to release another album after Bulletproof Heart (1989). A collaboration with producer Ivor Guest, this was a self-funded project and Jones seeks to tie legendary Jamaican musicians Sly Dunbar and Robbie Shakespeare to a firm recording date. Her phone call with the latter becomes animated, as he refuses to commit and Jones demands some respect because she can't afford to book studio time if he is going to give her the runaround. She also reminds him that she is human and deserves better from an old friend.

Having let Fiennes capture a little vulnerability, Jones returns to diva mode, as she breakfasts on champagne while recording `This Is'. She jokes about wishing that a certain body part was as tight as a particularly stubborn oyster shell and her laughter during the session belies the ice queen reputation that she has so carefully nurtured. Footage of the recording is intercut with a live performance, as the lyrics again reveal Jones's reflective mood while cutting the album. But she had to make sacrifices along the way and we see her complaining to a television producer that she feels like a madam in a brothel in being surrounded by female dancers in skimpy white costumes while singing her distinctive disco version of `La Vie en Rose'. As there are no male dancers available, Jones agrees to do a second take on the empty stage, but she finds the whole gig tacky and has to keep reminding herself that the ends will justify the means.

This certainly seems to be the case, as she lays down the rhythm track for `Well Well Well' with drummer Sly and bassist Robbie, whose readiness to improvise proves both a delight and a distraction. Jones remains in her element, however, as she chats to market traders while buying meat and swims in the Blue Lagoon. But being home also brings back painful memories and she alludes during a conversation with son Paulo and niece Chantel about the abuse that she suffered at the hands of her step-grandfather, Master Patrick (aka Mas P), a preacher whose a ferocious temper prompted Grace to act as lookout for her younger siblings to protect them from his tirades. She cuts him a little slack by stating that he hadn't wanted to raise five kids in his later life, but still recalls how he used to read her letters to her parents in New York. He made such an impact on her that she used to channel her rage into her stage persona and one of her acting coaches had to hypnotise her and use a safe word when they did associational exercises.

Jones demonstrates her stage strut as she clashes giant cymbals at the start of `Warm Leatherette' and again in `From the Nipple to the Bottle', which examines her refusal to allow a man to manipulate her. This number is juxtaposed with a sequence of Jones preparing for a performance while fuming down the phone to an aide who has allowed a client to avoid signing a contract promising to pay for her hotel room. Initially strutting naked, she wanders between interconnecting rooms trying to memorise the words to `I Need a Man' and jokes that there are times when she simply has to be `a high-flying bitch' in order to get things done and make people honour their commitments.

Nevertheless, she gets her show face on in time - with the help of some busy backstage bees - and has a New York audience in a bijou venue lapping up `Pull Up to the Bumper'. After what is presumably this show, Jones holds court in her dressing-room, where a trendy devotee asks about the time she slapped Russell Harty on a BBC chat show. Happy to oblige, she recalls how Harty had turned away from her to interview Lord Lichfield and she insists that she had warned him a couple of times about being rude before she struck him. As she declares, with a mixture of self-deprecation and seriousness, she would never hit someone without prior warning.

While driving to a nightclub, Jones suggests that she would like the spirit of Timothy Leary to hold her hand as she died and a trance-like slow-motion sequence follows with plenty of distorted sound, as Jones dances the night away. A gentler percussion sound takes over, as we glide back to the recording studio. But this trip isn't all about the album, as Jones has also agreed to accompany Marjorie to church to see her bishop brother, Noel, preach a sermon. She fusses over which hat best goes with her colourful top and takes a deep swig from a bottle of white wine in the car park before going inside. Noel hands the floor to his mother, who brings the house down with a high-pitched rendition of `His Eye Is On the Sparrow', with Grace enjoying seeing Marjorie milk her moment in the spotlight, while also using it to praise God.

In the minibus home, Noel remembers that squabbles between the siblings always resulted in him taking sides with his brother Max, while Grace and Christian were natural allies and Pam was always neutral. He reminds them of the time that a pre-teen Grace was caught canoodling with a classmate and Mas P held a two-week interrogation before he started dishing out the whoopings. They remember how Max used to seek sanctuary with their neighbour, Ms Myrtle, and Jones goes to visit her and help feed the chickens. She is in no doubt that Jones had star potential at an early age and they spend an evening in her cramped kitchen discussing Mas P's attitude to his brood and playing jacks on the floor.

Cutting from this scene of humbly cosy domesticity, Jones allows green laser light to refract off a spangled bowler hat, as she rattles through an uptempo version of `Love Is the Drug'. During a champagne breakfast in Paris while wearing nothing but a fur coat, Jones reflects on the loneliness of being on stage. But, even if she forgets the words, she knows that she has the audience in the palm of her hand and she carries this sense of assurance into everything she does.

While in the city, she does a modelling session with photographer Jean-Paul Goude, who is not only Paulo's father, but who also did much to create her visual image at the start of her career. She enjoys posing for him and they discuss whether she should sing `La Vie en Noir' during her next show. He shares a birthday with Mas P and Jones tells Goude that he is the only man who made her knees buckle when she came to see him. Slightly embarrassed, he asks if she will be okay with the concept of getting old alone and she insists that she will never be lonely, as she can always find ways to occupy her time and her mind.

Being a grandmother certainly helps and we see Jones cooing over the sleeping infant resting on her father's hand. She also likes to keep on the move and, as the film ends, she returns to an old haunt in Jamaica to catch the sunset. Fittingly, `Hurricane' plays over the closing credits, as it captures the many moods that Jones has displayed for the camera and, yet, we are no closer to knowing the real woman or what drives her.

It would be fascinating to learn more about her artistic influences and inspirations, especially as Fiennes places music so squarely at the heart of her profile. But, while songs are performed in full on a minimalist stage set designed by Eiko Ishioka, with lots of chic lighting designs to show off the Philip Treacy hats and Jasper Conran corsets, we discover nothing about her creative process or how being famous transformed her existence. We also learn nothing about why she spent so long out of the studio and what prompted her to return with 23 songs that reflect upon almost a third of her lifetime. Nor do we find out anything about her perspective on the a changing world, apart from the fact that her accent alters to suit the scenario she's inhabiting.

Mercifully, we are spared any salacious details about her often turbulent love life and, instead, we get to see the value that Jones places on her family. It's sad, therefore, that the release of the film should coincide with the death of her mother Marjorie at the age of 90. Indeed, it's clear that Jones's Jamaican roots also matter a great deal to her and there is a sense that she is currently reclaiming the island for herself to dim the scarring memories of her youth. But Grace Jones is not one to buckle under emotional pressure and she acknowledges that taking ownership of her pain has been crucial to her evolution as a woman and as an artist. However, she remains the consummate performer and, while she allows her guard to drop for the odd fleeting glimpse with her nearest and dearest, she keeps her true self closely under wraps.

9) LONDON SYMPHONY.

According to the poet Ezra Pound: `in the city the visual impressions succeed each other, overlap, overcross, they are cinematic'. Yet the form largely died out with the coming of sound and only sporadic instances appeared into the 1960s. But it influence can be seen in the work of Godfrey Reggio, Michael Glawogger and Thomas Schadt, who marked the 75th anniversary of Ruttmann's landmark documentary with Berlin Symphony in 2002. Thus, director Alex Barrett and writer Rahim Moledina are contributing to a rejuvenated artform with London Symphony, which revives the spirit of actuality pioneers John Grierson (who had despised the city symphony format for prioritising the masses over the individual) and Humphrey Jennings and follows the elegiac example of Patrick Keiller's London (1994) and Julien Temple's London: The Modern Babylon (2012) in capturing the changing moods of one of the world's greatest cities.

Divided into four movements that have been adroitly assembled to the music of James McWilliam, this works best if viewers avoid trying to play `spot the landmark' and allow the themes to suggest themselves through the flow of images that have been beautifully photographed in lustrous monochrome by Barrett, Diana Olifirova, Keifer Nyron Taylor, Jackie Teboul and Simon Thorpe. Some are more subtly expressed than others. But there is no shortage of ideas to amuse, entice and provoke in this dexterous montage of some 300 places around a capital that remains vibrant and defiant in the face of terrorist atrocities and catastrophic fires.

Opening on a shot of trees before dawn, the First Movement shows London's different architectural styles at first light, as stone walls, half-timbered facades, thatched roots, elegant gables, Georgian terraces and suburban estates jostle for attention with turrets and windmills. A phalanx of cranes rises above the cityscape, as the buildings of tomorrow take shape under the watchful gaze of statues commemorating past achievement. Modern edifices of stone, glass and steel tower in eclectic shapes and sizes above classical churches and august institutions that were probably just as contentious in their own day.

This diversity extends to the Underground, where commuters scuttle along walkways and down escalators to read books, papers, kindles and phones without making the slightest attempt to make contact with another passenger. On the surface, taxis, buses and trams dominate the roads, while the screen splits into quarters to show some of the surviving pay phones before the camera lingers on `Out of Order', artist David Mach's wonderful row of dominoing red call boxes. Another montage of domiciles follows, with the towerblocks suddenly seeming mournfully vulnerable after Grenfell. We also get a glimpse of some homeless people sleeping rough on the pavements before we are taken on a tour of riverside apartments in the gentrified dockland districts. But it's here that Barrett makes one of his few missteps by gauchely inserting a shot of a Monopoly board, in case we've missed the point of his associational juxtapositions.

Fortunately, he moves on quickly to show people playing chess with giant pavement pieces, cyclists participating in a road race, park cricketers enjoying a game and the statue of Peter Osgood looking down on Chelsea's home ground of Stamford Bridge. Onwards past the Emirates and Wembley, we see a woman sculling down the Thames that provides a safe harbour for historic battleships and state-of-the-art pleasure boats alike. On dry land, cable cars glide through the air over Greenwich, while the London Eye turns slowly on the South Bank. Everything looks small and insignificant from vantage points like these and ArcelorMittal Orbit at the Olympic Park, with those making their way across the roof of the Millennium Dome looking as much like ants as those scurrying along the city streets. They pass war memorials without a second glance, although the camera pauses to pay its respects by the Kindertransport monument at Liverpool Street Station.

The implication here (whether it is true of not) is that London has always opened its arms to those in need of sanctuary and the Second Movement begins with a series of idyllic images of parkland and water. Birds of all kinds flutter between the trees, while ducks and swans make drolly contrasting progress over ponds and lakes. Squirrels nibble, pigeons peck, deer slumber in the sunshine and dogs chase sticks, as joggers amble along footpaths past tennis courts and chip-and-putt courses. Such exertions prove too much for many, however, and they sit on benches and sprawl on blankets to read. Other snooze, feed the birds or chat on their phones, as the more energetic visit the Peace Pagoda in Battersea or take pedaloes for a spin. Close-ups of flowers in bloom prompt diversions to a horticultural show, a craft fair, a jumble sale and a street market. A secondhand record stall catches the eye in an arcade before a montage of exotic foodstuffs (including Kosher and Halal meats) again hints at London's ethnic diversity. But a 15- and then a 32-way split depicting rubbish bins suggests the wasted produce that could help feed those in need before we see a man scrabbling in a wheelie bin. Shots of fast food cooking presage a swift jaunt around Chinatown and a rather abrupt cut to the plaques marking the Kingston Upon Thames residences of moving picture pioneer Eadweard Muybridge. Some naked flesh is briefly glimpsed in one of his zoopraxiscope studies before we are treated to an obvious, but well-made contrast between close-ups of people stuffing their faces in chic riverside eateries and those shopping in foodbanks and being grateful for a hot meal in a soup kitchen.

The switch from scenes of abject poverty to the grandeur inside some of the capital's places of worship gets the Third Movement off to a similarly telegraphed, but justifiably confrontational start. There's something of a son et lumière feel to this segment, as shots of various churches, mosques, synagogues and temples are joined by cuts, dissolves and even an iris before one series of martial arts frescoes at the Shaolin Temple is made to seem almost animated through the accelerated transitions. The high altar and side chapels at Westminster Cathedral are more reverentially depicted, as is the statuary in buildings of both majestic splendour and simple functionality. Steeples, towers, minarets and domes crowd the skyline, while beneath them are ornate columns, pulpits and organ lofts, as well as the paraphernalia of Judaism, Russian Orthodoxy and Islam. But, having tackled this most sensitive of topics with the utmost care, Barrett employs a little Vertovian superimposition to gather clocks from across London to show how interrelated many of the faiths are and what they all share in terms in good.

Following a shot of St Paul's, the action branches out into the City to amusingly contrast traditional business signs with Post-its stuck to a noticeboard. As some people beaver away on computers, others mill around the shopping malls that have become the new temples of commerce. Buskers play as images of the pounding footfall of consumers are superimposed prior to stark shots of gleaming chain stores and slightly poky privately owned high street business. However, a segue into a gift shop initiates a sequence linking views of Leighton House and the Brunel, Imperial War and British museums. Remaining in Bloomsbury, we wander into the School of Oriental and African Studies and pass through various campuses and past the odd public library before we fetch up in The Barbican.

With the score at its most Nymanesque, this leisure and learning section almost turned into a kind of advertorial travelogue and this touristy feel continues into the Fourth Movement, as the Thames Barrier, Tower Bridge and Big Ben appear in a montage of lamp posts and road, rail and foot bridges. The rush of images slows to take in raindrops splashing on paving stones and umbrellas, while streaks form on window panes and reflections in puddles. But, like the Ebbsfleet white horse, Londoners are made of stern stuff and go about their business undaunted and deserve a little relaxation at the end of the working day. Whether they seek out the Riverside Studios or a West End theatre or Foyles book store or a Soho sex shop, the atmosphere crackles under the neon lights that are grouped together in a composite shot that could have come out of EA Dupont's Piccadilly (1929).

From the famous flashing sign of Raymond's Revue Bar, we duck inside a traditional pub before gatecrashing a catered affair. As black cabs swirl around corners, we drop into the Cinema Museum before taking in the statues of Charlie Chaplin and William Shakespeare in Leicester Square. We board a merry-go-round at a funfair, where a chair-o-plane whizzes past bare branches against an inky night sky. These bright lights give way to the searchlights in a nightclub and the blur of cosy domesticity through the windows of the last train home. A whiteout takes us to a quiet suburban street, where a fox prowls undisturbed between the parked cars.

This closing scene of tranquility provides a timely reminder that London isn't quite a city that doesn't sleep. But Barrett and his team certainly capture the mad whirl of life in the greater metropolitan area and should be commended for casting their net so far afield from the expected landmarks. There's no sign of Nelson's Column, The Shard or Buckingham Palace and its royalty-related pageantry. But, then, there aren't that many black faces on show, either, especially among those playing at being ordinary people caught up in a vérité shoot. Indeed, a slight whiff of middle-class complacency recurringly pervades proceedings, as though Barrett and Moledina had opted to put the capital's best foot forward after deciding either not show or not to venture into the no-go housing estates or the rougher areas of the East End.

The pair do offer some socio-political critiques along the way, but the tone is very similar to that of Spare Time (1939), which was produced by Alberto Cavalcanti and directed by Humphrey Jennings, whose distinctive form of trenchant lyricism is a clear influence. But this is more of a celebration than anything more analytical and the 72-minute running time flies by. More importantly, however, it's a Londoner's labour of love and Barrett merits nothing but plaudits for having the imagination and determination to conceive the project in purely visual terms and to see it through to completion on the tightest of budgets.

8) TOWER.

Three years after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in Dallas, another Texan shooting shocked America. On 1 August 1966, 25 year-old engineering major Charles Whitman killed his mother and wife before climbing the clock tower at the University of Texas at Austin and started firing at random at the students milling around the campus. Over the next 90 minutes, the ex-Marine would kill 14 people (and an unborn baby) and wound 32 others before he was shot dead by two young police officers. Peter Bogdanovich based his debut feature, Targets (1968), on the incident, which also inspired Jerry Jameson's 1975 TV-movie, The Deadly Tower. But, in marking the 50th anniversary of this infamous event in Tower, Keith Maitland has returned to ’96 Minutes', an article written by Pamela Colloff for the Texax Monthly magazine that drew on the recollections of eyewitnesses who have been recreated on screen using the rotoscoping animation technique that was memorably employed by Richard Linklater on Waking Life (2002) and A Scanner Darkly (2006). Despite causing the murderous mayhem some 300 feet above the campus, Whitman is almost a marginal figure in this tense and deeply moving recreation that begins with pregnant anthropology student Claire Wilson James (Violett Beane) being hit in the back while walking on the concourse with new boyfriend, Tom Eckman (Cole Bee Wilson). He was fatally shot in the neck as he bent down to check on her and Claire recalls how a tutor admonished her for lounging around on the ground before the next bullet sent him scurrying for cover.

Meanwhile, as The Mamas & The Papas hit `Monday, Monday' plays jauntily on the soundtrack, teenager Aleck Hernandez, Jr. (Aldo Ordoñez) was finishing his paper round with cousin Lee `Junior' Zamora (Anthony Martinez) when the force of a shot to the shoulder knocked him off his bicycle. As cop Houston McCoy (Blair Jackson) skimmed stones in the nearby lake, news of the sniper reached Neal Spelce (Monty Muir) at the KTBC radio/TV station, who decided to drive to the university, where Kent Kirkley (Timothy Lucas) was already recording footage on a handheld camera. While onlookers Margaret C. Berry (Karen Davidson) and Brenda Bell (Vicky Illk) tried to make sense of what they were witnessing, off-duty cop Ramiro `Ray' Martinez (Louie Arnette) heard about the shootings on the KLRN TV network and volunteered to provide back-up. Around the same time, Allen Crum (Chris Doubek) heard the commotion from the campus Co-op store and rushed out to tend to Hernandez. Realising he couldn't cross back to the shop, he decided to take refuge in the tower and call home to reassure his wife that he was in one piece. But laying low was the last thing on the minds of freshmen John `Artly Snuff' Fox (Séamus Bolivar-Ochoa) and James Love (Cole Bresnehen), who abandoned a game of chess to investigate the commotion, only for a stray shot to send them into the nearest building.

A montage follows of clips of the wounded being interviewed in their hospital beds, images of people rushing for cover on the main drag and rotoscoped recollections of the fear and panic that set in before civilians arrived with their own weapons and started firing back. Borrowing a high-powered rifle, McCoy tried to line-up a shot at the tower. But he was distracted by the sight of fellow officer Billy Speed (John Fitch) being killed on the ground below. He recalls chatting to him a few hours earlier on the beat and how he had confided that he was going to quit the force and resume his studies. Yet he was forced to watch helplessly, along with Brenda, who laments the cowardice that prevented her from going to Speed's aid.

While Hernandez was rushed to hospital, Crum flipped the finger at the gunman from behind a pillar and narrowly avoided a reprisal shot before making his way into the tower, where he joined cop Jerry Day (Jeremy Brown) in climbing the main staircase. Back outside, next to the statue of Jefferson Davis, Fox was growing concerned for Claire, who was lying still on the hot concrete in the knowledge that her boyfriend and her baby were dead and that she would also perish if she attempted to move. She was astonished, therefore, when someone with red hair ran towards her through the heat haze and Rita Starpattern (Josephine McAdam) lay down beside her with the express purpose of keeping her conscious until help could arrive.

As a psychedelic montage (to Donovan's `Colours') recalls Claire's all-too-brief romance with Eckman, the tower clock moves round to 1pm. Spelce remembers how his live reports were being broadcast across the country, while Ramirez reflects on the instinctive sense of duty that directed him into the tower building lift. While he hooked up with Day and Crum on the 27th floor, Fox took shelter in the shade of a bush and determined to rescue Claire. As Rita ran for her life, Fox and Love carried Claire to a waiting medical team, while Vietnam veteran Brehan Ellison retrieved Eckman. Ellison is interviewed by the TV news, while the short-sighted Fox ran back into the line of fire to recover his glasses.

On their way to the observation deck, Martinez and Crum find several victims (some still alive) on the steps. Crum asks to be deputised so he can legally shoot the gunman if necessary and he covers Martinez, as he is joined by McCoy and Day. To the accompaniment of Debussy's `Clair de Lune', they creep towards the clock face and open fire, while Crum waves a handkerchief to signal for the shooting from below to cease. As Spelce announces Whitman's death, hundreds of people emerge from their hiding places and walk across the concourse to congregate in silent relief.

Such was the chaos at Brackenridge Hospital that Hernandez's parents were informed their son had died, while veteran newscaster Paul Bolton stopped a colleague from reading a list of the deceased live on air on hearing the name of his grandson, Paul Sonntag. Spelce (who is shown in old age, along with Claire, Brenda, Margaret, Fox, Martinez and Hernandez) breaks down as he recalls this ghastly moment, while Claire recalls her gratitude at Rita bringing a painting she had done to her bedside. She speculates upon the bravery that prompted a stranger to place herself in danger and Fox insists that she is in a special place in heaven.

McCoy and Crum have also passed on and Maitland intercuts extracts from interviews with them with footage of a local TV news special and of Walter Cronkite questioning Whitman's mindset and the extent to which films, comics and television have changed American attitudes to violence. Crum turned a cheque for a day's pay as a full deputy and shunned the limelight as a hero. Cousins Hernandez and Zamora meet up to reminisce, while Claire and Fox are reunited for the first time in five decades. They agree that it has always been easier to forget than confront the emotions they have experienced over the years, with Fox still feeling guilty for not having done more. But Claire reassures him that he did his bit.

Fox fights back the tears as he reveals that the incident taught him about human depravity. But Claire (who later adopted a son, Sirak, from Ethiopia) insists that she has forgiven Whitman and can even empathise with the pain that drove him to kill. However, the final montage of news clips from such mass shootings as Newtown, Columbine, Virginia Tech, Sandy Hook and Aurora suggests that the United States has yet to reconcile the rights of the individual with the need for tighter gun control.

Some critics have complained that this coda message might have been left unsaid, while others have questioned the need to show how life turned out for a handful of the survivors. But Maitland makes his points without undue fuss, even as he and editor Austin Reedy note that Fox and Love's daring dash to rescue Claire was recorded by three different cameras and, thus, anticipated both rolling and citizen news coverage of breaking stories. Some of his song choices might seem a little twee (notably The Lovin' Spoonful's `Daydream'), but Craig Staggs's rotoscoping and the use of actors to deliver the testimony gives the action a terrifying immediacy that is reinforced by the fact that the Texas legislature passed a law giving students the right to carry arms on campus on the 50th anniversary of the UT Tower Massacre. Such staggering insensitivity represents a gross insult to those who lost their lives and more than justifies Maitland's decision to avoid profiling Whitman or ponder his possible motives. But it does leave one wondering how change can ever come about, when neither outrage nor forgiveness seems to have the slightest effect on the gun lobby.

7) THE FARTHEST.

Several momentous anniversaries have been celebrated and commemorated in 2017, but the passage of four decades since NASA launched Voyagers 1 and 2 to explore the more remote regions of our solar system might have slipped under many people's radars. Yet, as Emer Reynolds reminds us in The Farthest, this audacious project should rank among humanity's proudest achievements, if only because it alerted any alien life forms out there to the existence of Chuck Berry's `Johnny B. Goode'.

When the two Voyager satellites were launched in 1977, they each carried a `golden record' containing greetings in 55 languages, as well as a variety of animal and human sounds, 115 photographs of our planet and civilisation, and 27 pieces of music from around the world. This was humankind's gift to any extraterrestrials that might intercept the little spacecraft, as well as a last testament, should the unthinkable ever happen, to prove that it once existed. As we see simulations of these durable objects tumbling into interstellar space, the voices of those who worked on the project marvel as how far they have travelled and how distant they now are from any other man-made matter. No wonder they sound relieved, humbled and proud.

A caption informs us that the original mission was to go on a `grand tour' of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. Chief scientist Edward Stone, designer/navigator Charley Kohlhase and plasma wave investigator Don Gurnett explain what the NASA team knew about these planets and how to exploit them to project the Voyagers further into space. But imaging scientist Larry Soderblom and low energy charged particles investigator Tom Krimigis concede that expectations weren't high of what were presumed to be icy rocks or gaseous masses, as Pioneer 11 (which had been launched in 1973) had passed Jupiter and Saturn and sent back what was then unparalleled data. Imaging scientist Carolyn Porco notes that the cameras used were pretty primitive, but NASA wanted to know if it was possible to steer a craft through the asteroid belts around the planets and took the images as a pleasing bonus.

According to imaging team leader Brad Smith, Uranus was a blue-green blur and Neptune was little more than a green dot in a telescope and plasma scientist Fran Bagenal confirms that little was known about their make-up and nature. As there was only so much that could be gleaned through a lens and because humans are curious creatures, it was decided to send Voyager to do some snooping on our behalf. Indeed, Porco suggests that our willingness to explore is an evolutionary characteristic that will enable us to learn how to live on other worlds. Image science representative Candy Hansen-Koharcheck concurs that asking questions keeps us going forwards. But the mission also needed a bit of luck, as the four planets were only in alignment every 176 years and the geo-mathematics would have to be exact in order for the gravitational pull of each planet to slingshot the Voyagers into the next phase of their journey.

Lovely overlapping pages of calculations and equations waft across the screen, as one of the speakers notes that they last time the planets were lined up, exploration was being undertaken by wooden sailing ships. President Nixon was amused to learn that Thomas Jefferson was in office at that time, but he only envisaged the mission visiting Jupiter and Saturn when he gave the go ahead for Voyager in July 1972. But the 11 teams involved in the design and construction process exceeded their brief and anticipated that the craft would be able to travel further if needed. They also wanted to do more than just observe.

Project manager John Casani claims the golden record is Voyager's heartbeat and designer Jon Lomberg recalls the role that astronomer Carl Sagan played in deciding upon the disc's content and producing it for a mere $25,000. James F. Bell, the author of The Interstellar Age, calls this a message in a bottle. But it was mathematician Frank Drake who persuaded Sagan to send recordings rather than drawings and/or texts and he chuckles as he lets slip that the NASA bods are jealous that his metal disc gets more attention than their genius. Producer Timothy Ferris reveals that they recorded the sound at half speed to accommodate two hours of material, around 30 minutes of which is non-musical. It's also noted that the cover not only contained instructions on how to play a gramophone record, but also bore a sky map showing Earth's position and Casani remembers some scientists being apoplectic because he had given out position away to potential enemy aliens. Mechanical systems project engineer Frank Locatell applauds the use of a disc to show off our intelligence and entice any recipients into admiring the perspicacity of the sender species.

But is there anyone (or anything) inhabiting the 200 billion stars in the Milky Way and the 200 billion other galaxies in the known universe. Planetary scientist Heidi Hammel says there is a possibility that other life forms exist, but there are no guarantees. Imaging scientist Rick Terrile uses grains of sand on a six-foot table top to convey the enormity of space and Bell avers that aliens would have to be advanced to even notice a tiny craft shooting along at 10 miles per second. Yet it has still taken four decades for Voyager to get this far out into our solar system and Locatell notes that there is a lot of room out there, with the nearest galaxy being Andromeda, some two million light years away. This is on a collision course with our own galaxy and they are due to meet in five billion years time. But, as cosmologist Lawrence Krauss points out, such is the vastness of the surrounding space that they will pass by without serious collateral damage and this realisation makes it possible to posit that Voyager can continue unhindered for possibly billions of years into the future. Current project manager Suzanne Dodd finds such timeframes staggering, yet Bagenal notes that Voyager's journey in cosmic terms is the equivalent to a quick dart around the block.

In order to increase the chances of survival, NASA decided to build two satellites at Pasadena in California in 1972. Bell commends the CalTec crew responsible their design for having the finest `what if' minds imaginable, as they were able to foresee all manner of gremlins and problems and devise solutions for them. Casani recalls how they needed to arrange the 12ft diameter antenna and the propulsion systems in such a way that they wouldn't interfere with each other, while Stone reflects on how primitive these 800kg aluminium and silicon projectiles are by today's standards, as each has only three computers aboard the 10-sided craft hub nicknamed `the bus' with 240,000 times less memory capacity than a smartphone.

Cutting between archive footage of engineers at work and computer modulations of features like the magnetic sensor and the plutonium power supply, Reynolds lets the team explain the construction process and how the ships would work. One member compares it to a small school bus and insists that Voyager has a grace that belies its gangly appearance.

As we see archive footage of men in white hazmat suits tinkering with the craft on the launch pad, we see the golden record fitted into place to the accompaniment of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, which was joined on the disc by Zairean pygmy girls singing an initiation song, the Japanese `Crane's Song', the Chinese `Flowing Streams' and the Indonesian gamelan piece, `Kinds of Flowers'. Ferris and Lomberg remember having six weeks to make the choices and being disappointed that The Beatles refused to licence anything. So, after debating whether to include something by Bob Dylan, they plumped for a blast of rock`n'roll, which prompted a Saturday Night Live sketch in which Steve Martin reveals that the first four words sent by the aliens were `Send More Chuck Berry'.

Ironically, Elvis Presley died four days before the launch date in August 1977. Locatell struggles for composure as he recalls seeing the satellites encased in their rockets and knowing that no human eyes would ever see them again. Kohlhase tuts at the press being put out because Voyager 2 was launched first and its sibling followed on a faster trajectory that enabled it to overtake in December. He also despairs that the media was more interested in the record than the science and Ferris recalls hastily convening a press conference at Frank Wolfe's Beachside Motel in a hall that had a thin partition separating the journalists from a Polish wedding.

They were launched on decommissioned Titan missiles, with V2 going on 20 August and V1 on 5 September. Locatell remembers the noise and the vibration, while Ferris and Lomberg were glad that what was essentially a large bomb did its job without a hitch. Infrared science rep Linda Spilker describes the sensation of watching the rocket disappear, while author Nick Sagan (who was seven at the time) muses on the fact that his recording of `Hello from the children of planet Earth' will long outlive him.

But, as Casini and Stone confess, the mission didn't get off to a great start, as the pummelling tumult of the launch confused V2s systems and it began initiating back-up programmes in the belief that it was failing. Reynolds charmingly uses a shot of a dipping kite to illustrate the point, while operations engineer David Linick recalls the newspaper headline `Mutiny in Space', as it appeared that NASA had lost control. But, as Hansen-Koharcheck explains, the craft had been too tightly programmed to allow for wriggle room and the code was tweaked before Voyager 1 took off a few weeks later. However, a leak nearly ruined the event and Stone, Casani and Kohlhase look back at the panic that the second propulsion stage might fail with wry relief, at V1 would have been lost before Jupiter but for three and a half seconds-worth of fuel.

Over a simulation of V1 separating from its boosters and opening out like an origami shape, Locatell holds back another tear as his part in the adventure comes to an end. Now is the time for the scientists to come to the fore. Krauss begins by describing how little they knew a human lifetime ago, when no one knew that space was expanding way beyond our galaxy following a big bang some 13.7 billion years ago. He also declares that space weighs something, but we have no idea what purpose this dominant force in the universe serves. Extreme close-ups of eyeballs suggest the looking and learning that humankind still has to do. But they also serve as a blinking pillow shot to allow two years of travel to pass so that Voyager can approach Jupiter.

After a journey of nearly 400 million miles, V1 got its first glimpse of Jupiter in March 1979, with V2 following behind four months later. A timelapse sequence shows the distant dot become a close-up of a planet 10 times the diameter of Earth, yet with no solid surface because it is primarily made up of hydrogen and helium. Atmospheric scientist Andrew Ingersoll explains how the gas is compressed and is ferociously hot and reveals that the red spot (which could easily swallow two Earths) is a storm that had been blowing for centuries. The images sent back were monochrome because they offered a higher resolution and colour is added by those processing the pictures at NASA. He was instantly excited by the footage, as it challenged existing notions on the turbulence of the gasses and this led to fears that the magnetic forces would destroy Voyager at the first hurdle, as its sensitive systems were only covered by the kind of silver foil that would be used to roast a turkey.

The twinkle in Locatell's eye as he tells this story is delightful and Voyager obviously survived in order to get close enough to make sound recordings of the radiation onslaught being emitted by Jupiter. Gurnett explains that the whooshing sounds denotes the first lightning heard anywhere other than Earth and he says space is a noisy place. Kohlhase and Soderblom, however, were more focused on the moons. They expected Calisto and Ganymede to be full of impact craters, but no one thought Europa would be so icily smooth or that it would be host to the largest salt ocean in the solar system. But the showstopper was Io, whose volcanic eruptions were spotted after Voyager had passed by navigation engineer Linda Morabito, who noticed the movements on observational images.

With new pictures arriving every 48 seconds, the flybys were periods of hectic activity with the NASA team expected to report to the press within three hours of new data becoming available. But a final surprise was in store, as Voyager took the first ever picture of Jupiter's ring. This changed the nature of the mission, as Terrile recalls, as they were now primed to expect equally astonishing returns from Saturn. Porco smiles as she notes the Homeric nature of the odyssey, as there were long periods of travel between intense bursts of activity.

While Voyager presses on, Reynolds returns to the golden disc and the multi-lingual greetings that were recorded by Carl Sagan at Cornell University, where he was Professor of Astronomy. Wife Linda Salzman played a key role and suggested their son joining Amahl Drake and Janet Sternberg in recording messages that the latter compares to pro-Tweets. She spoke Portuguese, while Drake knew Arabic to go along with the salutations in Ancient Greek, Nguni African, Rajasthani, Nepali and Mandarin. As The Carpenters sing `Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft', we see lots of children''s drawings of aliens and Porco and Soderblom debate the existing of intelligent life and our chances of finding these living needles in a cosmic haystack. Casani and Drake have no doubts, with the latter speculating that radio waves we don't yet know how to detect are reaching us all the time. However, Krauss points out that civilisations don't necessarily overlap in historical terms and that aliens who might have been ready to contact other species were too far in evolutionary advance of possible messages. Ingersoll reassuringly states that time and space travel is notoriously difficult and that aliens are unlikely to show up unannounced. Yet, Voyager managed to cross one billion miles of space to rendezvous with Saturn in the autumn of 1980. A timelapse sequence shows the planet getting closer, as Porco and Bagenal recall how rapidly the new discoveries came as data was returned to Mission Control. The excitement is conveyed by the throbbing rock music accompanying a montage showing the colours and texture of Saturn and its rings. However, as Casani interjects, the focus of the mission was on the largest moon, Titan.

Bell explains that many believe Earth shared a similar make-up before life appeared and it was considered worth sacrificing V1 to focus on Titan in order to let V2 (some nine months behind) go on to Uranus and Neptune. However, conditions prevented the cameras from penetrating the debris and scientists had to rely on radio signals. Then, the scan platform froze on V2 when it passed behind Saturn and there was gloomy panic that its mission was over. But the engineers manipulated the gears to restore the flow of lubricant and, after several painstaking hours, the situation was rectified to the relief of all.

Pink Floyd's `Us and Them' plays over the rear view of Saturn retreating into the distance, as Porco opines that the Voyager project enthused her because it showed the rest of the solar system what earthlings could do. Ferris reveals that they included a Back fugue on the record because it has a mathematical structure and that maths and physics could be the common language through which we communicate. But Hansen-Koharcheck thinks we are being arrogant in believing that an alien encounter would be as cosy as an episode of Star Trek. Humanity hasn't figured out how to communicate with dolphins and whales, so to believe it could easily befriend alien races is deluded.

It was also decided that 115 photographs encapsulating life on Earth should be included and Drake and Lomberg recall the problems of selecting sufficiently representative images. They were also keen to include anatomical studies, but NASA had been so stung by the media backlash about line drawings of a naked man and woman being sent up on Pioneer that it rejected a shot of a pregnant woman and her partner for fear of being accused of sending smut into space. Yet such was the sophistication of Voyager 2 that its computers could be reprogrammed to operate in the darker environs of Uranus and Neptune and Bell describes how the cameras were re-calibrated to slower shutter speeds, while the craft itself was taught how to pirouette so that nothing was missed as it hurtled along.

V2 had travelled 1.8 billion miles by the time it arrived at Uranus in January 1986. Brad Smith reflects on this once in a lifetime achievement with a wistful smile, as a caption informs us that the craft flew just 51,000 miles above the planet's clouds. As Bell recalls, a point of light became a world as the images of an aquamarine sphere came back to NASA and he remembers each one making people pause and exclaim. We are shown beautiful colour approximations (as we were with Saturn), as Stone recalls the shock discovery that Uranus had its magnetic pole near the equator. But Smith laments that it was the least photogenic of the planets and Hammel almost feels sorry for it that it missed its chance to shine because parts of the surface virtually shut down as they faced towards the sun.

Luckily, Terrile saves its face by commending its moons, with Miranda being the star turn because its surface was so gashed and pitted. Soderblom describes how the weakness of gravity would impact on a fall from a cliff on Miranda, while a caption reveals that V2 found two new rings and 10 tiny moons during its visitation. But the day of the press conference coincided with the Challenger disaster and Bagenal, Spiker and Dodd recall the shock and sadness felt among the Voyager team at the loss of life, but also at the fact their news would be overshadowed. A news clip shows President Ronald Reagan poignantly connecting exploration with courage, as a split screen contrasts the plumes of smoke following the mid-air explosion with the serene beauty of a crescent shot of Uranus.

While we wait for V2 to reach its next destination, Krauss ruminates on the purpose of science and how it has changed beyond all recognition in a short space of time. As kids we ask `why?', when the key question must always be `how?' and it frustrates Krauss that so many people think science should have a technological end product when its real glory lies in ideas. Yet the more we know, the more insignificant we become in the grander scheme of things, with the multiverse theory being the latest concept to take us further away from the centre of the action. Ironically, V2 needed to be taught some new tricks during its three and a half year voyage to Neptune, in order to function in the colder, darker environment some three billion miles from Earth.

While the onboard computers had to be updated, so did the reception equipment at NASA because it only had one shot at capturing the weakened signal. But the timelapse sequence brings this pale blue planet into focus and Bagenal recalls the thrill of getting up close to an orb that had only previously been photographed as a speck. Hammel was also blown away by the `Great Dark Spot' that nobody had foreseen, while everyone relished the challenge of photographing rings twice as dark as soot against a jet black background. Given these circumstances, the resulting images are phenomenal, as is the fact that the team sent V2 skimming 3000 miles above Neptune's polar clouds in order to get images of its moon, Triton. This required split-second timing and the success of the gambit sums up the audacity and expertise of the entire Voyager unit.

Soderblom was charged with imaging the icy surface of Triton and was confused as to why the images kept refusing to line up. So, he viewed them through red and blue lenses to create a 3-D effect and was astonished to discover geysers erupting on the moon. Linick, Bagenal and Hammel share Soderblom's exhilaration at making a discovery no one had even considered possible this far from the Sun. The last moments of exploring Neptune proved very emotional, as the planetary phase of V2's mission had ended and it now became an interplanetary craft. But the team had a celebratory party and Chuck Berry performed live on the steps of the HQ building.

Meanwhile, V1 had gone 3.7 billion miles from Earth and Carl Sagan suggested turning the camera back to take a unique picture of the solar system pointing towards the Sun. Amazingly, there was opposition to the project, as it had no strict scientific value. But Sagan went to the NASA top brass and the camera was pointed towards home on 14 February 1990 for the greatest `selfie' of all time. Hammel and Porco remember the thrill of seeing Earth caught in a sunbeam and it appears in the shot as a pin prick of light less than the size of a pixel in the image. When he showed the findings to the press, Sagan spoke about human history having played out on that speck and he stressed the responsibility we have to preserve it. Moreover, as Nick Sagan deduces, the picture proved that we are alone and that we are the only ones who can save us from ourselves.

A caption reveals that the cameras were turned off as the Voyagers moved further into space and the operation base was moved out of the JPL complex. But the mission continued, as the craft headed out of the heliosphere and into the galaxy beyond. Bell remembers the day in August 2012 that V1 popped out of the Sun's bubble and became the first man-made object to exit our solar system. Dodd compares it to the Little Engine That Could and Porco is humbled that we were able to take such a giant step in such an understated way. Daily messages are sent home, taking 18 hours to reach Earth, while V2 keeps plugging away in its wake to make its own small pieces of history.

As Soderblom concludes, there will never be another mission like it and the team members take pleasure in the fact that the satellites themselves, as well as the golden discs, will alert anyone who finds them to humanity's advanced intelligence. Bell notes that the craft are expected to survive for an incalculable period of time past the final shutdown of their systems and they will serve as evidence that we sent them. Krauss retains faith in the infinitesimal possibility that one or both of the Voyagers will be found. But, as Dodd avers, we shall long have lost contact with them and she finds that sad because we will never know which signal is goodbye.

Aptly closing on Pinkzebra's `We Won't Stop Dreaming', this is a fitting tribute to everyone involved in this awe-inspiring project. The eight year-old Liverpudlian who placed James Burke second only behind The Beatles in terms of hero worship would have loved this film and it's reassuring that his 56 year-old Oxford-based counterpart feels exactly the same way. From start to finish, Reynolds finds riveting images to complement the dense flow of verbal information and cinematographer Kate McCullough, editor Tony Cranstoun, CGI creator Ian Benjamin Kenny and visual effects designer Enda O'Connor surpass themselves in capturing the enormity and beauty of the information disseminated by Voyagers 1 and 2. They are the stars of the show, but the NASA boffins prove wonderful tour guides on the journey of a lifetime.

6) JANE.

Primatologist Jane Goodall is no stranger to the screen, having appeared in dozens of wildlife and eco-advocacy documentaries, as well as having been the subject of such profiles as Jeremy Bristow's Jane Goodall: Beauty and the Beasts, Lorenz Knauer's Jane's Journey (both 2010) and Mark Bristow's Jane Goodall: Return to Gombe (2004). But Brett Morgen's Jane seems set to become the definitive record of how a London secretary with no scientific training accepted a position to observe an ape colony in Tanzania and evolved into one of the world's leading authorities on simian behaviour. Narrated by the 83 year-old Goodall herself and drawing on the 140 hours of 16mm colour footage recorded in the 1960s by her late ex-husband and renowned wildlife photographer. Hugo van Lawick, this is engaging, revealing, moving and humbling in equal measure.

In 1957, without any prior experience in the field, Jane Goodall was chosen by the renowned archaeologist and palaeontologist Louis Leakey to undertake a study of chimpanzees in Gombe. Having always dreamed from a male perspective because girls simply didn't have adventures, the 26 year-old Goodall was delighted to quit her secretarial job and seize the opportunity to live in Africa with the insects, birds and animals that had always fascinated her. Previously unseen footage shows Goodall in her pristine safari suit with a fresh face and blonde ponytail, creeping through the bush and climbing trees to get a better look at the creatures she had been asked to study in their everyday environment.

Interviewed today, she reveals that there were no existing studies to consult and, consequently, she had to invent her own observation techniques as she went along. Aware of snakes, she convinced herself that she had a right to share the Gombe forests with them and that she would be unharmed if she avoided treading on them. During the early days of her sojourn, Goodall failed to find the chimps and sometimes would only see one in isolation. Thus, when she finally saw groups of apes whooping and feeding in a fig tree she was exhilarated.

Animation and rapid cutting are used to show notebook pages being filled and the pace of the editing increases as Goodall begins to find her way in the jungle. We see her washing her hair in a chuckling stream and learn that she was accompanied by her mother, who ran a clinic for the families of the local fishermen. Having lost her husband during the war when Jane was just five years old, Margaret Goodall had always encouraged her daughter's ambitions and readily volunteered to keep her company in the bush. But, while she was thoroughly enjoying her trip of a lifetime, Goodall was aware that time was running out and that she needed to seek the acceptance of the chimps in order to make a discovery that would justify the study being awarded another grant.

After five months, a male decided to trust her and led her to his territory, where she was able to watch the chimps at closer quarters. She learned about the importance of grooming and physical contact in their relationships and started naming them, as she got to know them. Her host was David Greybeard, who often spent time with the leader, Goliath, and Mr McGregor, a belligerent older male. She also got to know a female named Flo and her daughter Phoebe.

As she watched moments of affection and aggression, fear and jealousy, play and contentment, Goodall realised that the chimps were thinking creatures and thanked her lucky stars that she had not been to university and been led astray by theoretical preconceptions. Having also bankrolled Dian Fossey's study of gorillas, Leakey had wanted Goodall to observe chimps so that he might be able to gauge how Stone Age humans had lived and Goodall was able to inform him that David Graybeard used a twig to fish for termites in their hill. Thus, like our ancient ancestors, chimpanzees used tools to complete tasks. Moreover, they stripped the leaves off twigs to make them suitable for the task in hand and this evidence of implement modification convinced Leakey that the definition of animal and human needed to be rewritten.

Once the news of Goodall's pioneering work broke and the papers started reporting that a `comely' girl had made such a crucial discovery, attempts were made within the scientific community to discredit her methodology and her findings. As we learn that Leakey received a generous grant from the National Geographic Society to continue the research, a montage of headlines and anatomical drawings follows, along with explosions suggesting the seismic nature of the findings. Such pyrotechnics rather go against the calm rationality of Goodall's narration. But Morgen makes good use of the archive footage to show Goodall becoming acclimatised to her setting and getting to know the chimps on a more intimate basis.

In the summer of 1962, Dutch photographer Baron Hugo van Lawick was sent to document Goodall's progress. She admits that she wasn't overly impressed by an outsider muscling in on her project and didn't like him smoking. Yet she was acutely aware that he was interested in her and wasn't quite sure how to respond to his charm and compliments. But she was more concerned with the fact that David Greybeard had ventured into her tent and helped himself to some bananas. Emboldened by the prospect of some free fruit, the entire group began to follow suit and we see the chimps scurrying away with armfuls of bananas and coming right up to Goodall as she sat quietly. Eventually, one even took a small bunch from her hand and looked her up and down for a second before loping away. Unfortunately, the chimps also proved to be unconscionable thieves, who stole shirts and blankets, as well as cardboard boxes, which they used to chew. They also became aggressive over food and Goodall and Van Lawick had to take shelter in order to record the raids on the camp. In a bid to restore order, they decided to set up a feeding station which required the chimps to learn how to open a metal box buried in the ground in order to receive a reward. As the animals came closer, Goodall got to know them better an observed Flo attracting several mates (much to Phoebe's annoyance) and the footage of the mating ritual is teasingly cut with shots of Van Lawick and Goodall sitting together, with her pulling tongues at the camera and him picking things out of her hair.

We also see the telegrams in which Van Lawick proposed and Goodall accepted, as well as footage of an Alpine honeymoon and some overdue time back in Blighty. But the newlyweds were keen to get back to Gombe and see Flo rearing her son Flint, with a little help from Phoebe. Footage shows Flint clinging to Flo and clambering up her back. He also takes a tumble as he tries to walk and has fun playing on the sloping side of the tent. After a rope is strung between the trees for the chimps to play with, Goodall is allowed to tickle, tussle and groom those in David Greybeard's coterie. Five decades on, she still feels that being so accepted was a privilege and she concedes that getting to know the chimpanzees gave her a greater understanding of herself, as she became one with the spiritual nature of her surroundings.

Everything seemed to be going swimmingly when Goodall and Van Lawick set up a research station and invited students to assist with the project. But National Geographic withdrew Van Lawick's grant and he had to find other work filming on the Serengeti. Initially, Jane went with him and acquired a broader insight into chimp society from watching other animals. She also gave birth to a son of her own, Grub, and he became part of their safari party. As chimps had been known to eat human infants, Goodall stayed away from Gombe for a spell and when they did visit, Grub had to be kept in a play cage in order to protect him. But, while Goodall missed the chimps, her team continued to care for them and she was able to gain an appreciation of Flo's strong maternal instinct by experiencing it herself and even applying some of its to her own approach to parenting.

A television crew comes from America to make a documentary about Grub and Goodall explains how they had taught him to recognise danger signs. We see some hyenas attacking a zebra for a feed and the harsh reality of the wild hits home harder when a polio epidemic strikes Gombe and McGregor becomes so ill that he has to be put down. Morgen asks Goodall if she was interfering with Nature by vaccinating the chimps and she insists that it's a human duty to help a suffering animal. Indeed, she wouldn't want to keep living if she was similarly afflicted. She confirms that humans didn't bring the disease, as it had started to the south. But, as a result of the outbreak, all physical contact with the chimps was banned and, according to Goodall, Gombe was never quite the same.

Much to Goodall's chagrin, Grub develops a dislike for chimps and, with Van Lawick often being away on location, she begins to find it increasingly difficult to keep the station going and home school her son. Now a grandmother, Flo is also having domestic problems, as, while Flint has become an adolescent, he continues to cling to his mother and keeps trying to suckle, even though she pushes him away in an effort to coax him into becoming more independent. In a similar move, Grub is sent to school in London, although he would continue to spend summers in Tanzania. Tragically, the break-up of the family unit is reflected in the wild, as Flo perishes while attempting to cross a stream and Flint is so distraught by her loss that he stays close to her body in the water and makes repeated efforts with cries and touches to make her respond. After a period of mourning, Flint wanders away. But, rather than dealing with his Flo's death, he takes to a tree, where he stops eating and dies three weeks later because he simply couldn't bear the thought of living without his mother.

Shortly after the passing of Flo and Flint, their group began to divide and Goodall recalls her shock when the apes that had moved to the south were ostracised by those that had remained. Over shocking footage of an attack on their camp, Goodall reveals that the entire migrant group had been butchered in a ferocious civil war. It had dismayed her to discover that chimps had a brutal side, as she had come to see them as nicer versions of humans and her silence on the soundtrack speaks volumes, as we see photographs of the faces of the apes slaughtered in the power struggle. By this time, Goodall and Van Lawick had started to drift apart, as he was always away filming. They realised that they needed to pursue their own goals. But Jane has learned from the chimps that while we share many characteristics, we are different and our use of language has enabled us to learn about things that we can't see. Moreover, we can pass on stories about our past. This ability to communicate has developed an intellect that gives humans a duty to protect other species, as well as the planet as a whole. Since 1986, therefore, Goodall has toured the world calling for better stewardship of the Earth. As a consequence, she has not spent more than three weeks in any one place for the last 30 years.

A caption reveals that the Roots & Shoots programme was set up by the Jane Goodall Institute in 1991 to teach children around the world about conservation and, over the ensuing quarter of a century, millions have heard her message. Grub is now a boat builder in Dar-Es Salem and Goodall is proud of the way in which he took his own decisions about shaping his future. She is modest about her own achievement and puts much of it down to hard work and determination. But, as we see Goodall in her element with her Gombe chimps, she admits that a good deal of her success has also been down to luck and the stars.

Reflecting on her life and work with the analytical rationality that helped her push the boundaries of primatology, Goodall makes for excellent company, as she recalls her relationships with the people and chimpanzees she had loved the most. There's nothing sentimental about her memories of David Graybeard, Flo and Flint, but it's impossible not to be amused and moved by the stories of their mischief and melancholy. Guided by a typically apposite Philip Glass score, Morgen also resists the temptation to wallow, as he and editors Joe Beshenkovsky and Will Zndaric enhance Goodalls's beguiling anecdotes with Van Lawick's exceptional colour photography and up-to-date images by Ellen Kuras.

Coming after documentaries on boxing (On the Ropes, 2000), Hollywood producer Robert Evans (The Kid Stays n the Picture, 2002), the Chicago Eight (Chicago 10, 2007), The Rolling Stones (Crossfire Hurricane, 2012) and Kurt Cobain (Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck, 2015), this represents quite a change of pace and topic for Morgen. By focusing on such a short period of time, he leaves a lot of questions unanswered. He might, for example, have made more extensive use of captions to date events. But he is surely aware that any assessment of Goodall's post-Gombe activities would be markedly more difficult to illustrate without this treasure trove of evocative images. It would also probably necessitate the inclusion of some talking-heads, whose observations would almost certainly not compensate for the loss of intimacy that Morgen achieves here. Maybe it would be instructive to hear some objective opinions on Goodall's work. But she is so plainspoken about her breakthroughs and mistakes alike that she is probably her own most perceptive critic.

5) LOVE, CECIL.

There will always be times when a documentarist finds such meagre pickings among the archives that they become heavily reliant upon the best items they unearth. This is definitely true in the case of Lisa Immordino Vreeland's Love, Cecil, an engaging profile of the photographer and set-cum-costume designer Cecil Beaton, which makes extensive use of John Freemna's 1962 Face to Face interview and Bill Verity's tele-doc, Beaton By Bailey (1971), which pitted the 67 year-old against fellow shutterbug, David Bailey. Both programmes can be found in full on YouTube and it's interesting to see how Immordino Vreeland has filleted them and slotted the highlights in between her own talking-head interviews, extracts from Beaton's diaries and her inspired selection from his photo files. The result may be somewhat conventional. But, such is the subject's wit, eloquence and forthrightness that this gradually becomes an amusingly perceptive treatise on the rise of celebrity culture.

While being quizzed by John Freeman on the BBC's Face to Face in early 1962, Cecil Beaton confessed that he had no idea whether he best excelled as a photographer, a painter, a designer or a writer. In an extract from his diary (read with world-weary insight by Rupert Everett), he cursed the fact that he was unable to take a flattering self-portrait, as he knew himself too well. But, while he had exposed countless rolls of film and had used thousands of words to capture the fleeting moment, he continued to wander in `the labyrinth of choice' trying to find his métier. He concedes that ambition had driven him more than talent at the outset, but reveals that a need to reach the end of the rainbow now prevents him from turning back.

As an array of voices opines over a montage of still images, however, everything Beaton did had a unifying touch of grace and Vogue editor Hamish Bowles and photographer David Bailey note how he reinvented Edwardian chic in his own image in the Ascot sequence of George Cukor's My Fair Lady (1964). Auctioneer Philippe Garner comments on Beaton's love of beauty and we see the title page of The Book of Beauty and some of his striking portraits, as Beaton declares that beauty is rarely static and that we all restlessly search for the next beautiful thing. Photographer Tim Walker suggests that Beaton had a relationship with an idealised vision of his sitters and, as a consequence, created the notion of finding `truth in fantasy'.

Yet Beaton didn't plan on remaining a photographer, as he initially took pictures as a means to an end. His fascination began with a love of theatre and a postcard of Lily Elsie in a white suit with a cigarette and cane. Garner claims Beaton was seduced by the escapist nature of theatre and that he determined to live his life intoxicated by the thrill he derived from the stage. At first, he enlisted sisters Nancy and Baba to be his models and never quite mastered the technical side of the art. But, having hated school and only learnt about life rather than anything scholastic, Beaton developed the knack of teaching himself what he needed to know.

Despite his mediocre academic record, he still went up to Cambridge in 1922 and set about becoming `a rabid aesthete' by studying the Renaissance and Diaghilev's Ballets Russe, as well as the theatre and photography. He discovered a talent for shocking people, with his modish costumes occasionally being complemented by drag outfits. Giving lectures a miss, Beaton helped found the drama club and designed stage scenery for numerous productions, while also acting. The photographs from these period have been carefully preserved in albums and look strikingly modern, even though they are almost a century old. It's intriguing to note how many were self-portraits and, as biographer Hugo Vickers notes, Beaton often sent these snaps to the London papers in order to promote himself and the production he was working on, in that order.

Leaving St John's College without a degree in 1925, Beaton lacked the confidence to act, the subject matter to write plays and the opening to design for the West End stage. So, he continued to photograph his sisters, who indulged his whims and later joked with him that he had made them twist like a corkscrew in order to strike the right poses. He often sent these pictures to journals like The Bystander and got the odd snap into the society pages of the mainstream press. Yet, as model Penelope Tree recalls, Beaton was terribly insecure and resented being the son of a timber merchant from Hampstead, who had preferred his younger brother, Reggie. Flitting between diary extracts and his Face to Face responses, Beaton admits that he had been happy until puberty, when he began to feel reined in and rebelled by painting his face with his mother's cosmetics.

Vickers and Sir Roy Strong note the difficulty of securing an entrée into society during the 1920s and explain that Beaton finally got into the charmed circle after the Honourable Stephen Tennant became his patron. Suddenly a member of the Bright Young Things, Beaton spent his time partying and we see home-movie footage of him dragging up in acted scenarios at Savay Farm in Denham in 1927. The dressing-up box played a key role in their revels, as they harked back to the elegance of the Regency and Belle Époque eras and Beaton discovered his milieu among these fellow escapists, who found fun in narcissism and subversion.

While Beaton lacked an inherited income and remained an outsider, his friends went along with every odd concept for pictures, with Daphne Du Maurier placing her head inside a Victorian glass dome and Edith Sitwell reclining amidst flowers and cellophane clouds. Daisy Fellows posed in front of crinkled silver foil and the result is stunning. But, as Beaton tells Sheridan Morley in an television interview, he was not averse to creating images that he knew would garner publicity. In one newspaper piece, he called them his `freak photographs' and explained how he could make the camera do gymnastics.

His father had been astonished by his success and by the fact that he had made such a splash in the United States, We see Beaton discussing beauty in an early talkie short from 1929, as he sought to create a self-promoting fuss by declaring that American girls couldn't hold a candle to their British counterparts, who were so ravishing that their beauty ought to be immortal. However, he did admire the wrists, feet and legs of American girls and described their movement as `perfect'. A wonderful shot at the end of the diatribe sees Beaton examine his nails in a moment of almost schoolboy vulnerability. Yet one senses even this was done for calculating effect, unlike the snaps he took on the streets of New York, which have an authenticity and energy that now seem at one and at odds with the Beaton style.

His campaign to get himself noticed led to a contract with Vogue and Contributing Editor Robin Muir suggests that Beaton brought a new sophistication and elegance to fashion photography. He was influenced by German Expressionism and French New Romanticism and made enough money to buy Ashcombe House in Wiltshire, which was painted by the likes of Rex Whistler, Pavel Tchelitchew, Christian Bérard and Salvador Dalí during the fabled weekend parties that Beaton used to host, where there was always something going on. He often sent invitations together with costume suggestions and always made his guests trace the outline of their hands on the wall in one of the bathrooms.

Despite claiming that he tried hard not to be, Beaton confided to his diary that he was `a terrible, terrible homosexualist' and, around this time, he became infatuated with Peter Watson, whose looks and charm he envied. Yet Manolo Blahnik is horrified that Beaton identified with such a man and Vickers reveals that Watson treated Beaton shabbily and later betrayed him with their mutual friend, Oliver Messel.

The heartbroken Beaton sought refuge in Hollywood and Blahnik swoons over his picture of Gary Cooper, while we also see portraits of Judy Garland, Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., Katharine Hepburn, Orson Welles and Marlene Dietrich. But, just as he was getting his foot in the door, Beaton caused a scandal with some anti-Semitic details in an illustration for the February 1938 edition of Vogue that prompted Condé Nast to pulp the entire run. Beaton claimed not to know what the offending word he had used meant and pleaded to detesting Hitler. But Vickers avers that he gravely misjudged the situation and got above himself in seeking to shock and paid the price by being forced to resign.

Despite being largely ostracised for 18 months, Beaton received a phone call in July 1939 from a lady-in-waiting at Buckingham Palace asking him to photography Queen Elizabeth the next day. He wrote about his relief and excitement in his diary and V&A Photography curator Susanna Brown reveals that the first session with the queen posing with a parasol lasted over three hours. In all, Beaton would work with over 30 members of the Royal Family and somehow managed to stay in the good books of both the queen and her detested sister-in-law, the Duchess of Windsor.

During one session, Queen Elizabeth described the pink glow of the sky over Piccadilly and said she often felt like it was on fire. But her words proved prophetic, as the Blitz hit the capital during the Second World War and Beaton got a chance to do his bit as a combat photographer. The Imperial War Museum's Hilary Roberts explains how the Ministry of Information saw Beaton as an ideal person to record the bomb damage to help win the propaganda war in neutral America. Seeing this as a chance to redeem himself after the Vogue incident, Beaton took over 7000 photographs during the conflict and published eight books of images, while writing and drawing for magazine articles.

He later recalled that this commission had afforded him a marvellous opportunity to dig himself out of a rut. But Beaton took it very seriously, as he travelled to Burma, China and Egypt. Bowles opines that what set him apart from his peers was his eagerness to find beauty in extremis and Beaton noted in his diaries how the destruction he saw often resembled Surrealist paintings. Yet, as Bowles jokes, the crusade to depict defiance also had an eroticised tinge, as Beaton's eye for manliness is readily evident in his images of service personnel without being blatant.

Beaton found aircraft hangars more visual than film sets and hospitals more dramatic than stages. He photographed four year-old Eileen Dunne with her bandaged head clutching a toy and it made the cover of Life magazine on 22 September 1940 and changed many an American mind about the war against Fascism. Beaton himself survived a plane crash and frequent illness and Walker notes how the onetime foppish dandy proved to have a tough interior. As Beaton told Freeman, he was always willing to take on tasks that helped him become a better person.

With an unexploded bomb putting his London home at 8 Pelham Place off limits, Beaton took refuge at Ashcombe, only to learn that his landlord wanted to evict him. He was pained by the discovery of the last note that his brother Reggie had written before throwing himself under a Tube train in 1933 and the telegram announcing the death of a father who had been crushed by the blow. In 1948, Beaton moved across Wiltshire to Reddish House and remained there until 1980. He felt grown up here and Roberts recalls how the change of scenery coincided with a shift away from photography and into stage design.

Beaton began with John Gielgud's production of Lady Windermere's Fan at the Theatre Royal, Haymarket, which brought colour back to postwar London. Taking cues from Diaghilev, he relied on taste to govern his choice and New York Times dance critic Alastair Macaulay suggests that he also took the essence of Anna Pavlova's elegance. He wishes he could have seen the 1936 production of Frederick Ashton's Apparitions, which marked Beaton's bow with the Royal Ballet and made daring use of violet and scarlet for the dresses.

Macaulay claims that Beaton's instincts were so good because he had been a dandy. He had informed Freeman that he was no longer self-conscious and restricted affectation to his hats. In a clip from Beaton By Bailey, Truman Capote marvels that Beaton could be vain and self-effacing at the same time. But Beaton denied having any vanity and interior designer Nicky Haslam opines that he spent his life trying to improve himself rather than preening on his laurels.

During the course of his cross-examination, Freeman had asked Beaton to name the most beautiful woman he had ever photographed and he had replied, Greta Garbo. Over a clip from George Fitzmaurice's Mata Hari (1931), he admits his obsession to his diary. But Garbo resisted his requests to sit for him until 1946 and fashion designer Isaac Mizrahi insists that the resulting pictures rank among the most loving he ever took. However, their new-found closeness came to an abrupt end when Garbo cabled (after the spread had been printed) to insist that only one image appeared in Vogue and she felt sufficiently betrayed by Beaton to ostracise him for six months. Actress Leslie Caron is convinced that there was `hanky panky' between them, although actor Peter Eyre is less sure it went that far. Haslam suggests both were bisexual and felt they could `turn' the other and Beaton recorded a conversation in which he had once teased Garbo that they would have made a good married couple. However, she had given him a glare to suggest that she thought otherwise.

In addition to his diaries, Beaton also kept scrapbooks (150 diaries and 97 scrapbooks) and he chose one for his luxury item on Desert Island Discs. But he was forever restless and David Bailey jokes that his penchant for royalty had existed long before he photographed Queen Elizabeth II at her Coronation in 1953. Seated above the organ pipes at Westminster Abbey, Beaton had apparently secreted some sandwiches inside his top hat and had munched on them as he made the simple sketches of the ceremony that were published in a number of magazines. But it was the radiance he captured in his colour photographs of Her Majesty that did so much to sell the romance and glamour of the new reign. Yet, as Vickers, Bowles and Mizrahi testify, Beaton always felt unworthy of being in their company and exaggerated the sense of subservience that he adopted with his other celebrity sitters.

Beaton wrote 38 books during his lifetime and Mizrahi claims that The Glass of Fashion changed his life. Walker recalls getting a job in the Beaton Vogue archive and experiencing the thrill of seeing pictures of worthies like Coco Chanel, Marilyn Monroe, Sugar Ray Robinson, Marlon Brando, Cecil Day Lewis, Grace Kelly, Audrey Hepburn, Ingrid Bergman, Francis Bacon and Aldous Huxley. He claims the nobility of Beaton's romanticism rubbed off on him, while David Hockney declares that Beaton taught him the value of portrait photography and Garner suggests that Beaton never recorded the world as he found it, as he always transformed it to conform to his vision.

In 1958, Beaton found himself in the position of being a kid in a sweet shop when MGM producer Arthur Freed gave him carte blanche on the sets and costumes of Vincente Minnelli's Gigi (1958). He confided in his diary that Leslie Caron was the textbook example of photogenicity, as the pop of a flashbulb transformed her from a frog into a princess. Beaton also worked on My Fair Lady and Bowles ticks off his seven year-old self for sniffily disapproving of the fact that he had given the Ascot ladies too much mascara. Yet, despite winning a brace of Academy Awards for transferring his stage vision to the screen, Beaton had informed Sheridan Morley that he had not enjoyed the filming process. Haslam confirms that Beaton had come to hate Hollywood, although a clip from Barry Norman's interview with George Cukor implies that it was tension on the set with the director that had spoilt the experience and it's clear that their mutual antipathy remained strong long after the cameras stopped rolling.

During the shoot, Beaton had escaped to San Francisco and promptly fallen in love with Kinmont Hoitsma, an American Olympic fencer he had met in a bar named the Tool Box (not that this is mentioned in the film, as such details are a little too gritty). Their romance lasted only a year before Hoitsma returned Stateside, although Vickers suggests that Beaton had an aversion to coupledom and had only dallied with Hoitsma because he made him feel young at a time when society was changing rapidly.

Former butler Ray Gurton declares that Beaton had an active a sex life, but had to be discreet as homosexual practices were still illegal in Britain. But Penelope Tree suggests that Beaton he was more dedicated to being a great artist than a lover. We see pictures of him with Gertrude Stein, Mova Bismarck and Diana Cooper and Vogue maven Diana Vreeland sings his praises as a loyal friend to Truman Capote, who applauds him for being a total self-creation. But they joke that Beaton also had a gift for gathering enemies like roses. He also smiles as he reveals his loathing of Evelyn Waugh to Freeman and puzzles in his diary why he detests Noel Coward so much while loving his work. Beaton also hated Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor for their crassness, vulgarity and ostentatious bad taste. He similarly lays into Katharine Hepburn for being a mottled piece of decaying matter whose lack of generosity and grace has turned her into a dried-up boot.

Beaton admits on camera that he excels at hating, even though he tries to convince himself that he is only fooling. But Eyre and Bailey recall a genius for rudeness and Tree admits that he could be hard to read, as he was a mass of contradictions. Roy Strong bluntly declares Beaton to be two-faced and impersonates him unctuously greeting a woman he had been badmouthing seconds before. Beaton admits to Freeman that he didn't always like the person he found in his diaries, but he didn't airbrush out the less flattering aspects of his personality. However, as Vickers notes, his revelation of the affair with Garbo offended her greatly, along with several others who felt that Beaton had not behaved as a gentleman by kissing and telling.

We see a clip from Beaton By Bailey of Bailey photographing Beaton snapping Penelope Tree in a verdant garden. But they disliked each other intensely and when Bailey is informed that Beaton had called his film `inconclusive and superficial', he cackles that those were the characteristics he had been striving to expose. Hockney was fonder of Beaton, however, and recalls him buying a painting for £40 that enabled him to go to America for the first time. Yet, over footage of Beaton snapping him, Hockney jokes that a Vogue assignment to sketch Beaton had taken an eternity to complete because they could never agree on what represented a good likeness.

Tree enthuses that she had no idea how Beaton got so much done, as he never seemed to stop. Over images of Twiggy and Jean Shrimpton, the diary boasts of his stamina and an ability to outlast even the youngest friends at work or play. His parties were legendary and Hockney recalls meeting Laurence Olivier, Vivien Leigh and Mick Jagger, who had bumped into Beaton in Morocco. His diary entry marvels at his ugly beauty and feminine machismo and Bowles wonders how Beaton would have coped in the Instagram age and what his diary entry would have said about Kim Kardashian.

Gurton recalls his employer being happy pottering in the garden and we see him fussing over his white cat, Timothy. But Beaton was not one for idle retirement and we cut to a 1968 National Portrait Gallery Retrospective, as Strong reveals that this was the first major exhibition of a living photographer at the gallery and that it did them both the world of good. Another would follow in 2004. We see images of Dietrich, Merle Oberon, Pablo Picasso, Lillian Gish and Elizabeth II, as Beaton laments in an interview that he hadn't possessed greater intellectual depth.

As the new decade began, Beaton developed an admiration for Barbra Streisand while working with her on Minnelli's On a Clear Day You Can See Forever (1970), which was released the same year that Julie Andrews presented him with a Tony Award for his contribution to the Broadway show, Coco. A year later, he curated Fashion: An Anthology at the V&A, while he was knighted in 1972, an award he considered to be `practically posthumous'. Yet he felt he needed to keep working hard just to stand still. Ultimately, however, he was halted by a stroke in 1974, as he never fully recovered the use of his right hand. Vickers reveals he was also depressed by a loss of elegance in the world and spent much of his later years fretting over his financial security.

In his diary Beaton grieved for lost youth and absent friends and wished that he could feel gratitude for what he had managed to fit in rather than sadness for what had gone forever. But Eyre ventures that Beaton was never entirely satisfied with what he had achieved and always felt that he could have done better. While writing his biography, Vickers had discovered a post-stroke diary and notes that Beaton had stopped writing after the 17 year-old Timothy had been put to sleep and Beaton had wondered whether he was the lucky one for being able to enter oblivion. A week later, on 18 January 1980, he died at Reddish House after getting flustered in the night. In his room were pictures of Watson, Garbo and Hoitsma.

As voices off sum up - with one surmising that Beaton would have resented dying because he hated missing anything - he concludes in his own diary that he had managed to stick to his goal of being daring and different and had fought to the end his battle against `the played-safers and the slaves of the ordinary'. This seems an ironic closing remark, however, as Immordino Vreeland rarely stray from the tried-and-trusted clips`n'quips format that served her so well on Diana Vreeland: The Eye Has to Travel (2011) and Peggy Guggenheim: Art Addict (2015). Nevertheless, she and editor Bernadine Colish have done a fine job in compiling a portrait that does respectful justice to Beaton's artistic achievements and his marvellously busy life.

They also leave one wondering how Beaton would have felt about post-Warholian celebrity and how he would have dealt with the temptations offered by social media. Moreover, the film provides a timely reminder of how the film-makers of the future will be forced to mine Facebook and Twitter accounts (if they have not already been long deleted) for the kind of insightful acid drops that Beaton used to confide to his diary. What is particularly intriguing, however, is how Beaton was rescued from the oblivion caused by his anti-Semitic misstep by the Royal Family. One can scarcely imagine this happening today, with so many online trolls being ready to taint by association. But Beaton didn't simply rely on royal patronage to secure his rehabilitation and his wartime heroics probably deserve a film to themselves, as do the glorious monochrome photographs, which not only testify to Beaton's eye and aesthetic flair, but also to a lost era of style that passed with the Golden Age of Hollywood.

4) KENNY.

The loss of 96 Liverpool supporters in the Hillsborough Disaster forms a crucial part of a wider analysis of the impact of tragedy presented in Stewart Sugg's Kenny, as Kenny Dalglish had the misfortune to be in the dugout in Sheffield after having been on the pitch in Brussels four years earlier and in the stands in Glasgow in 1971, when 39 and 66 more fans lost their lives after leaving home to watch a football match.

Opening on 22 February 1991 with Kenny Dalglish's shock resignation as manager of Liverpool Football Club, Chapter One:, `When You Walk Through a Storm'', takes us back to 29 May 1985 when the Reds played Juventus in the final of the European Cup at the Heysel Stadium in Brussels. Fans were already aware that this was to be Joe Fagan's last game in charge and hopes were high that his all-conquering team would give him a rousing send-off. What they didn't know is that the board had already approached the team's iconic No.7 to be his successor.

Teammate Alan Hansen recalls wandering around the stadium in the shadow of the Atomium and being surprised to find a half-brick from the crumbling terraces on the pitch. Dalglish had also been concerned about the fact that a large contingent of Juventus fans had found their way into what was supposed to be a neutral zone between the two sets of supporters. Peter Hooton (the lead singer of The Farm and a ubiquitous figure in LFC documentaries) recalls that many in the Liverpool contingent feared that trouble would erupt and Phil Scrafton (the author of Hillsborough: The Truth) describes how a wall collapsed after a wave of Liverpool fans charged across the terracing.

Watching from the main stand, Marina Dalglish remembers hearing that there were casualties and John Barnes asks Dalglish and Hansen about how they felt about being made to play in the knowledge that people had lost their lives. Goalkeeper Bruce Grobbelaar remembers walking on to the pitch and seeing the evidence of carnage in one corner. Dalglish admits to playing in a daze because no one knew the full facts and it scarcely seemed to matter that Juve won 1-0 after the dubious award of a penalty for a trip outside the box on Zbigniew Boniek. As Barry Davies averred at the end of his BBC commentary, football didn't matter much in the face of such a tragedy.

Marina recalls going shopping the next day with a sense of shame and Scrafton reveals that Heysel had a dreadful impact on both the club (which was barred from all European competition for five years) and its following, as it had acquired a reputation for violence after previously being known for its good humour and banter. It was in this atmosphere that Dalglish took the reins as player-manager at the age of 34. But he was more concerned with the families of those who had lost loved ones and vowed to make the best of the hand he had been dealt.

As we learn in Chapter Two, `Walk On, Walk On', this steel was instilled in the young Kenny Dalglish by his parents in the East End of Glasgow in the 1950s. He returns to the family home in Dalmarnock to meet his sister, Carol, and they reminisce about their happy childhood. Dalglish was taught to kick a ball as soon as he could walk and he played after school with his pals and followed his father in supporting Rangers. Indeed, they had been in the crowd at the Old Firm game at Ibrox on 2 January 1971 when a late Colin Stein equaliser for the home team had caused to a surge of fans trying to get back into the ground around Stairway 13 and 66 fans were killed in the resulting crush. As Dalglish rightly says, there but for the grace of God went he. But what Sugg doesn't mention that the youngest fan to perish that day was a nine year-old Liverpudlian named Patrick Pickup, who was attending his first match with his stepfather.

Shortly afterwards, the Dalglish family moved to a block of flats overlooking the Rangers training ground. But, as Sir Alex Ferguson remembers, Sean Fallon, Jock Stein's assistant at Celtic, had been keeping tabs on his schoolboy progression and Dalglish had no hesitation in signing for the Parkhead club in May 1967 after Fallon had come to the house and left his wife and kids in the car for an hour while he negotiated a deal. Over a soft-focus reconstruction of the meeting, Dalglish remembers his father refusing to remove a photo of Rangers captain from the mantelpiece. But nothing is said about Celtic's European Cup triumph that spring or how Dalglish was able to bridge the religious divide that existed between the two clubs. Moreover, there's no mention of the fact that he had failed to impress fellow Scot Bill Shankly while on trial at Anfield the previous year.

But details are not Sugg's strong suit and he overlooks both the successful season-long loan that Dalglish had at Cumbernauld United and the stint he enjoyed in the Celtic reserve team that was so good it had earned the nickname `the Quality Street Gang'. However, Dalglish recalls Stein informing him that he would be making his debut against Hamilton Academical in the Scottish League Cup and jokes that Lisbon Lion Bobby Murdoch had noticed that he was so nervous that he had put his boots on the wrong feet.

Kenny and Marina go on a sentimental journey to the Glasgow they had known when they were courting. They pop in the Beechwood pub, where she had worked behind the bar while still at school. She recalls that Celtic players often used to drink in there and, after she teases him about the fact that he was always blushing, he snipes back that her father had warned him off her because she was a handful. As they recall their first date - the pictures and chips on a rainy Saturday - they get the giggles because she had been speculating about his car with a friend when he had walked up to the house after catching the bus.

If Marina and Kenny were a match made in heaven, so were Dalglish and Celtic. But a quick montage of TV clips and black-and-white photographs is all we get before Captain Kenny informs Stein that he wants to leave at the end of the 1976-77 season. Having just lost Kevin Keegan to Hamburg after Liverpool had won the European Cup for the first time, manager Bob Paisley had no qualms about splashing out a British record £440,000 to bring Dalglish to Merseyside and it proved to be one of the shrewdest investments in the club's history. Hooton and Scrafton recall the excitement felt on the Kop when Dalglish hit the ground running and they realised what a talent he was.

As football highlights were highly selective 40 years ago, not all of Dalglish's goals have been recorded for posterity. But there are some crackers in the montage that follows, as George Best proclaims Dalglish the best player in the country because he has so much time on the ball and sees things mere mortals miss. Among his most important goals was the winner in the 1978 European Cup Final against Bruges and he recalls how he gave away the Mini he had been awarded as the match winner to pay for a night out with the boys. As open-top bus parades were forbidden in Glasgow, he finally got to fulfil a dream and he comments on the generosity of the Everton fans who turned out to share in the city's moment of glory.

These were dark days for Merseyside and Ricky Tomlinson quotes from a letter that Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher received from Chancellor Geoffrey Howe about the option of imposing a policy of `managed decline' upon the region to stop wasting precious financial resources in a bid to make water flow uphill. Scrafton and Hooton concur that Liverpool FC raised the spirits of their downtrodden supporters and, as montage of civil unrest and glorious goals plays out, Dalglish and Hansen were well aware that the trophies they kept winning provided a light in the gloom.

At this point, Ian Rush joined Liverpool from Chester and took a good deal of ribbing from Dalglish while he found his feet. But they quickly formed a deadly partnership that often seemed almost telepathic and some of the goals shown here are simply sublime. They agree that the atmosphere in the dressing-room was key to the team's success, as everyone knew they were in it together, and a caption reels off the four European Cups, five league titles, four League Cups and one European Super Cup that Liverpool won between 1977-85.

But, as Chapter Three, `Hope in Your Heart', demonstrates, Dalglish took the team to new heights in the season that followed Heysel. As Hansen tells Barnes over a cuppa, he thought his friendship with Dalglish was going to end with his promotion. But they became closer, as Dalglish made Hansen captain and kept playing so that he had a foot in both camps. Things didn't start well, however, and Hansen confided in his pal that this was the worst Liverpool team he had played in. But Dalglish was confident that things would perk up if they could go on a winning run and it took them to the title, with Dalglish scoring the winner in a 0-1 win over Chelsea at Stamford Bridge. The team completed the double by beating Everton 3-1 in the FA Cup Final, with Rush scoring twice.

Off the pitch, Marina was surprised that Kenny took the manager's job, as he had promised to walk away from football after he finished playing. They meet up with daughters Lynsey, Lauren and Kelly and, over a takeaway, they agree that he could be difficult to live with, as he was often unhappy with the performance even when the team won. We see home movies of a family Christmas and the kids (including son Paul) complain that their father is always busy and Marina avers that there's no point bending the truth just because they are on camera. However, he reminds her that football is one of those jobs that it's impossible to escape because everyone is talking about it all of the time.

Teammate and friend Graeme Souness concurs that Dalglish could be an awkward customer with those he didn't know and trust and had a prickly relationship with the press. Hansen jokes that Dalglish thinks weakness is a weakness and did everything he could to present a show of strength. He also knew that tough decisions had to be taken for the good of the club and this earned him a reputation for being ruthless. His daughters suggests that he liked to play down his intelligence in public, but this was all part of a defence mechanism because he has always been as sharp as a tack. They enjoy watching footage of Eric Morecambe trying to translate Dalglish's speech at an awards ceremony and Sugg slips in the famous dressing-room clip when he pretends he can't understand what an English interviewer is saying. But, what is clear from this segment, is that the pressure on a manager is always greater than that on a player and the Dalglish family as a whole had to learn on the hoof how to cope with the change.

Following the Boot Room example of reshuffling the pack, Dalglish brought John Barnes, John Aldridge and Peter Beardsley to Anfield for the 1987-88 season and Barnes jokes about his part in `The Anfield Rap', which Australian midfielder Craig Johnson had penned prior to the Cup Final against Wimbledon. No mention is made of this blip in a campaign characterised by one-touch brilliance that included a 5-0 victory over Nottingham Forest that Preston North End legend Tom Finney described as the best performance he had ever seen.

Dalglish reckons that the reason that team was so successful was that everyone was good at their jobs and Sugg makes a digression to explore how it must have felt to be Paul Dalglish, who was a decent player, but not on a par with his father. He travels with Kenny and Marina to Ottawa, where Paul is coaching Ottawa Fury with Bruce Grobbelaar. Father and son are equally determined to win on the golf course and Kenny fails to remember a story Paul tells about reprimanding him for getting a red flash on a pair of custom-made boots. Paul also tells a story about Kenny lecturing a teenage pal's dad for congratulating his son on a good shot during a golf game. But Kenny insists that Paul would have learned nothing if everything had been handed to him on a plate.

As it is, he is proud of him trying to make a career in a sport where people accuse him of cashing in on a famous name. He also feels glad he has Grobbelaar to guide him, as he was a trusted teammate with whom he shared the nightmare of Hillsborough. But, as Chapter Four, `The Dark', begins, Paul reveals that he never speaks about the tragedy with his father, as he knows he has never recovered from the events of 15 April 1989 and their aftermath.

Driving to Sheffield, Dalglish recalls the preparations made for the FA Cup semi-final against Nottingham Forest and how optimistic he was about the game. He has never been back to Hillsborough and he parks on a hill overlooking the ground and the pain is etched on his face, as he declares in voiceover that nothing would make him set foot inside it again. Some have suggested that this is because he has failed to deal with his post-traumatic stress, but he knows his mind is made up.

BBC footage shows how the game continued for some time after it became clear that something was happening on the terracing behind Grobbelaar's goal. Kelly Cates remembers her mother shouting that this wasn't hooliganism, but an emergency and we see Dalglish stood on the touchline trying to see what was going on, as fans scrambled to safety and ambulances drove across the pitch. Aware that Paul was with his friends in that part of the ground, he had to balance his concern as a parent with his duty as the Liverpool manager. Thus, he had to address the fans over the tannoy to urge them to remain calm and the relief is palpable when he was reunited with Paul in the tunnel.

Unable to comprehend the grief of the families of the 96, Dalglish was determined that the club was going to do everything it could to support them. He reveals that he received a phone call from Kelvin McKenzie, the editor of The Sun, apologising for the tissue of lies he had printed under the headline, `The Truth'. But he had hung up on him when he declined to print a retraction. Instead, he made sure that players and officials attended the funerals of every victim and Scrafton declares that the burden that he and Marina took upon themselves was superhuman. Kelly suggests that he never dealt with his own feelings because he believed it was his job to remain steadfast for their sake and didn't feel entitled to the same concern.

Hansen recalls returning to Sheffield to see those in hospital and being asked by one mother to say goodbye to a 14 year-old son before his life support machine was switched off. He also remembers a father grieving for his 17 year-old when Anfield was opened up to the fans and he shrugs that nothing could prepare anyone for dealing with the agony of loss on this scale. Dalglish took Kelly and Paul to Anfield on the last day before the tributes were cleared. He reveals this was his first time on the Kop and he was deeply moved by the sense of community revealed in the messages. Paul remembers leaving his Celtic and Liverpool teddy bears and Dalglish chokes back tears as he thinks back on the realisation of how much Liverpool FC meant to the bereaved.

Five weeks later, the team rallied to beat Everton 3-2 in the Cup Final, with the returned Ian Rush again scoring twice. But Hillsborough continued to haunt Dalglish and we see home movies of Christmas 1990, as Marina claims that away from the limelight her husband was falling apart. Things came to a head during a 4-4 draw at Goodison Park in 5th Round FA Cup replay on 20 February 1991 when Dalglish realised that he no longer felt sufficiently in control to make decisions to change the course of a game. Two days later, he resigned.

Scrafton opines that only he can know the hell he endured during this period and this clearly isn't the time and place for him to reveal all. But Sugg opts to leap forward 27 years rather than explore how Dalglish rediscovered his love of football by steering Blackburn Rovers to the Premiership title in 1994-95 and, in the process, becoming only the fourth man in history (after Tom Watson, Herbert Chapman and Brian Clough) to win the league with two different clubs. He also ducks the difficult spells at Newcastle United and Celtic, as well as the mixed fortunes he enjoyed during a return to the Anfield hot seat following the sacking of Roy Hodgson in October 2010.

Instead, he comes right up to the present day in Chapter Five, `The Sweet Silver Song of the Lark', as the Justice for the 96 campaign finally pays off and Kenny and Marina were awarded the freedom of the city along with the victims they had done so much to commemorate. Mothers Jenni Hicks and Margaret Aspinall thank him for what he has done for them and echo Scrafton in emphasising the esteem in which they are held on Merseyside. He is also still beloved by the club, who renamed the Centenary Stand in his honour on 13 October 2017. As Gerry and the Pacemakers swell on the soundtrack and a final montage is intercut with this happy event, a closing caption reveals that Dalglish won 27 trophies during his 15 years at Anfield, including the club's last league title in 1990.

Since 2005, the Marina Dalglish Appeal has also raised £8 million for cancer research. In other words, if anyone deserves a knighthood, it's Kenny Dalglish. But, knowing him, he would much rather go about his business without the fuss. Long may he continue to do so, as he will always hold a special place in the hearts of Scousers everywhere.

This fittingly low-key tribute clearly has his blessing and Sugg and editor David Freemantle make a solid job of piecing together the superbly sourced archive material. As with Mike Todd's Shankly: Nature's Fire, there are flaws and omissions. But the films share an understanding of their subjects and an appreciation of the duo's standing with Koppites. Although he treads carefully in assessing the personal legacy of Hillsborough, Sugg deserves credit for touching on the impact that Dalglish's suffering in silence had on his wife and kids. From the charming scenes of family cosiness, it's clear the worst has long passed. But this thoughtful documentary reminds us that King Kenny should be cherished for much more than his prowess on a football field.

3) KEDI.

Ailurophiles everywhere will relish Ceyda Torun's Kedi. As everyone knows, the World Wide Web was invented so that people could post their video clips of cats doing cute and/or hilarious things. But Torun and cinematographers Charlie Wuppermann and Alp Korfali are content merely to pay homage to the feline population of Istanbul, as it goes about its business with a poise, ingenuity, resolution and insouciance that no other animal can match. Delicately edited by Mo Stoebe to a charming score by Kira Fontana, this is an absolute delight that dispels the myth that cats are aloof and scheming and might even engage the odd cynophile, too.

The first cat we encounter is Sari (`The Hustler'), a tabby-and-white mother of four adorable kittens, who trots between pavement cafés and rubbish bins in Galata in search of tasty treats. Quite prepared to use her charm to coax reluctant diners into making donations, she lives near a clothing shop, whose owner, Arzu Göl, has noticed a distinct change in her personality since she had her litter. Whereas she previously spent much of her time curled up in comfort, she is now a bundle of energy who seems able to dispel negative vibes with her upbeat resourcefulness.

Following shots of cats on ledges, rooftops and awnings, we see waterfront fishmonger Kemal Suncu feeding kittens clustering around his stall, while their mother competes with a flock of seagulls for some scraps. We are then introduced to Bengü (`The Lover'), a scrawny kitten who stayed behind in Karaköy after its sibling trio had gone to explore the wider world. Eight years on, she is the queen of the parade and enjoys being brushed by shopkeeper Necati Özer, who reveals that she sulks if he pets any other cats.

Yet, while she purrs and preens while being chucked under the chin, she flicks a paw at a black cat who ventures too close to the cardboard box containing her young. Describing her as part of the family, but stressing that she comes and goes on her own terms, Hamdi Selami Karaci insists that she is as good for the soul as prayer beads. He continues: `It's said that cats are aware of Gods existence, but that dogs are not. Dogs think people are God, but cats don't. Cats know that people act as middlemen to God's will. They're not ungrateful - they just know better.'

Dreadlocked journalist Mine Sogut claims that befriending a cat is like making contact with an alien, as we somehow manage to overcome the fact we have more differences than similarities. Keeping its distance, the camera watches cats being stroked by passers-by and fed by those who make no claim to ownership. Fisherman Teoman Toraman uses a syringe to give milk to a litter sheltering in a box by the Bosphorus after they had been abandoned by their mother. An old male keeps an eye on them and stays at the back of the box, while the fisherman feeds his mewling charges. He explains that he has protected cats like Bombis since a stray had directed him to a lost wallet when he needed 120 lira to repair his boat after a storm. Such is his conviction that this was a genuine godsend that he declares that anyone who refuses to believe his story is a heathen.

Following a montage filled with shipping, fishermen and kittens playing in a covered market, we meet Aslan Parçasi (`The Hunter'), a black-and-white predator, who dispatches the rats and mice that scurry around a quayside restaurant in Kandilli. Owner Yilmaz Yildiz calls him a lion of a cat, but also insists that he repays the kindness he receives by being part of the team. A night-vision interlude shows Aslan on the prowl, as a rat tries to keep one step ahead after being cornered in a gully. But even the local pit bulls cower when Psikopat (`The Psycho') is on the move in Samatya. More white than black, she is a tough cookie, who enjoys a rough scratch and stealing fish when not patrolling her patch and giving `husband' Osman Pasha a hard time for trying to eat the biscuits put down by their café-owning carers, Vecdi Kelav and Erdogan Amca. However, she is even more aggressive towards a ginger female that tries to flirt with him and chases her under a hedge.

Painter Elif Nursad Atalay admires the effortless elegance that cats possess and avers that they carry themselves better than modern women. She explains that it has become difficult to express defiant femininity in Turkey and worries that society will try to suppress feline independence rather than embrace the honesty of the animal spirit. Doubtless, she would like Deniz (`The Social Butterfly'), who lives in an undercover bazaar in Organik and flits between the stalls with a mix of curiosity, mischief and affection that is superbly captured by low-level travelling shots that follow in his wake before he crashes out on some packaging. However, the café owner who looks after Deniz fears for the future of the neighbourhood cats, as there are plans to demolish the market and build new tower blocks and a road.

An older man is presented with an injured kitten and takes it to a vet by taxi and this willingness to go out of one's way to help a cat in distress also drives toyshop owner Gülsüm Agaoglu, who cooks chicken and rice for around 50 animals a day. In addition to those who hang around the store, she also ministers to those who prefer to remain outdoors. Cartoonist Bülent Üstün recalls freaking out his father as a boy by building a cat cemetery in the garden with his brother and marking each grave with a cross, like the ones they had seen in Sergio Leone's The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966). As drawing is such a solitary occupation, he takes comfort from seeing his cat snoozing in a drawer and delights in the fact that she never shows the slightest gratitude for food or petting because she believes she is doing him a favour by extending her trust.

Üstün lives in the Cihangir district and claims that cats became part of the Istanbul scene after they hopped off boats in the nearby harbour and decided that terra firms offered them better prospects than a life at sea. As the first sewers were built in this area, households kept cats to fend off the invasion of rats. But relationship with the residents was never based entirely on pragmatism, as bakery owner Murat Sögütlüoglu, who tends to Gamsiz (`The Player'), points out. Initially, he was known as `The Milkman', as he would just eat and leave. After he started getting bullied by bigger males, however, he kept returning for fussing and his happy-go-lucky nature made him popular with all the customers.

As Eda Dereci notes, he can be a bit of a bruiser himself and is forever at the vet's. Moreover, he drops into different houses around the block, as he has worked out who has the best sausages or gives the best ear tugs. Laçin Ceylan has got used to him pawing at her window and lets him eat with her own cat, Gece. But Gamsiz isn't one for sharing and his joust with new kid on the block, Ginger, shows how territorial street cats can be, as he follows the interloper up a tree, along a ledge and on to a balcony in his bid to stake his claim.

There's nothing quite like the howl of a possessive puss, but things are a little quieter around Hagia Sophia, as one cat lover muses on the similarities between cats with their nine lives and superheroes. But the hero is Süleyman Erdogan, a man recovering from a nervous breakdown who found feeding cats so therapeutic that he slips away from his café everyday to look after the strays living around a waterfront complex. He even brings eye drops for one of the kittens and, the moment he arrives, cats emerge from every nook and cranny to pad after him until he slips them some fish.

It's pleasure to watch the interaction between this benefactor and his brood. But, everywhere you look in Istanbul, as the rush-hour stampede gives way to nocturnal meandering, cats and humans are rubbing along. Among them is Duman (`The Gentleman'), a smoky grey fellow who is first seen dozing in a basket in a Nisantasi delicatessen. He is the only cat wearing a collar in the entire film, but he is anything but tamed. Refusing to let the customers stroke him, he remains outside the shop and paws at the window to let staff members Fatih Dogan, Ülkü Demirtiken and Erol Köroglu know when he wants some smoked turkey, beef or manchego from the fine food counter. Yet, just behind him, we see a little girl begging with a paper cup and it says much that no one gives her a second glance. A loner who knows when he's well off, Duman knows how to use his street smarts when it suits him. As do the many other cats shown over a discussion about Turkish society losing its sense of humour and needing to show greater compassion towards the cats that have helped give Istanbul its character. One woman hopes they can rekindle a dying love of life, while another states that a cat looking up from your feet is life smiling at you. We see Bombis snuggled up to Toraman's dog as they head out to sea and he reiterates his conviction that cats are a gift from above. And, as the last speaker proclaims that cats remind us that we are alive, we see a proud profile against a red sky over the city, as though an air of contentment had descended.

Although the emphasis falls firmly on the characterful creatures milling around Istanbul, this is as much a city symphony as it is a cats' chorus. Cutting between aerial shots of the red rooftops and views across the twinkling strait separating Europe from Asia, Torun captures the atmosphere of her hometown, as well as the personality of its inhabitants. She is careful to keep things apolitical and secular and, consequently, earns the trust of the interviewees, who explore the coexistent bond between Istanbulites and their feline friends with eloquent simplicity.

Initially, she pursued 35 cats and began filming 19 before deciding to concentrate on her magnificent seven. Each is as charismatic as they are photogenic. Yet, no matter how infatuating they are, Torun keeps the vignettes rooted in reality by alluding to the lingering sense of the danger that they face from traffic, disease, other animals and the uncaring humans plotting to destroy their backstreet habitats. There's nothing cutesome, either, about the hissing and howling that Burçin Aktan and Ilkin Kitapçi record during the various catfights, while Torun also stresses how hard the humans have to work in order to be so generous with their largesse and time. But, ultimately, this is a celebration of all things cat and the natural-born performers on show here prove utterly irresistible, whether they are bobbling, clambering, feasting, napping or coaxing men, women and children into doing their bidding with little more than a tilt of a head, the widening of an eye or the prod of a paw.

2) JOURNEY THROUGH FRENCH CINEMA.

During his 50+ years in the French film industry, Bertrand Tavernier has done a little bit of everything. Starting out as an adolescent fan, he wrote criticism, worked as an on-set assistant and served as a publicist before graduating to directing. He has also done valuable work as an archivist. But his greatest contribution to keeping the memory of old films alive may well come in the form of Journey Through French Cinema, a magnificent three-hour documentary that represents merely the first steps in a trip down memory lane that will eventually be completed in an eight-hour TV series. Taking its cues from Martin Scorsese's A Personal Journey Through American Movies (1995) and My Voyage to Italy (2001), this is essential viewing for all cinéastes and begs the question, why someone hasn't thought of taking a similar turn through the highways and byways of British cinema?

Rather fittingly, the odyssey opens with a shot of Philippe Noiret in Tavernier's first feature, The Watchmaker of St Paul (1976), entering the gate of the family home in Lyon where parents René and Geneviève Tavernier has hosted such literary luminaries as poet Louis Aragon while publishing the anti-Vichy journal, Confluences, during the 1940-44 Occupation. This commitment to freedom of expression and resistance to tyranny left its mark on Tavernier as a man and as an artist and he recalls the thrill he felt at seeing the city lit up on the night the first American troops arrived.

In many ways, sitting in a darkened cinema and seeing the screen illuminated continues to remind Tavernier of that sense of exhilaration and excitement. He was five when the family relocated to Paris in 1946 and reflects on the time he spent in a sanatorium in Saint-Gervais being treated for tuberculosis and a problem with his retina. During this period, he saw the first film he remembers and shares the car chase sequence from Jacques Becker's Dernier atout (1942) as a preamble to a discussion of the director who first shaped his artistic sensibilities.

Tavernier considers Becker a genius and uses clips from Casque d'or (1952) to show how deftly he captures the atmosphere of the fin-de-siècle demimonde and builds towards the climactic tragedy. Such was Becker's attention to detail that minor characters were as perfectly delineated as the leads played by Simone Signoret and Serge Reggiani. Tavernier dips into the Modigliani biopic Montparnasse 19 (1958) to extol the elegance of Becker's camera style and into Rendez-vous de juillet (1949) to claim that, as a huge fan of Ernst Lubitsch and Howard Hawks, he was one of the first French directors to introduce American tropes into popular films.

If the jazz played by Rex Stewart in the latter paean to youth caught the postwar mood, Becker captured the rhythms of screwball in Edouard et Caroline (1951) and reclaimed film noir from Hollywood in the gripping prison escape saga, Le Trou (1960). Yet Becker could also be very French in exploring everyday life Falbalas (1945) and Antoine et Antoinette (1947). He also ensure his gangsters were recognisably Gallic and not pale American imitations in Touchez pas au grisbi (1954), in which he dwelt on Jean Gabin's bedtime preparations in his hideaway flat to reinforce his individualism. Such attention to detail was also evident in rustic tales like Goupi mains rouge (1943) and urban parables like Antoine et Antoinette, which turns on a lost lottery ticket.

As the champion of an auteur cinema that countered the verbosity of what he dubbed `the Tradition of Quality', François Truffaut is seen in archive footage hailing Becker's technique and Tavernier employs snippets from his films to show the simplicity of his settings, his surprisingly modern storytelling style and the genuine empathy he felt for his characters. He compares Becker's ordinary decency to that of George Orwell and shows how milieu and character were intertwined to achieve an authenticity that made his work more plausible and potent, none more so than in the scenes in Le Trou designed to demonstrate how difficult breaking through the concrete floor of a cell would be. Sadly, however, Becker died shortly after finishing the film at just 52 and a montage of memorable images from his monochrome masterpieces ends a heartfelt and precisely analytical section on a personal hero.

When he started school. Tavernier developed an obsession with cult cinemas and we see stills of various venues from his youth, as he tells a story about Quentin Tarantino thinking it was cool that there was once a Parisian theatre called The Far West. We see a clip from Luc Moullett's Les Sièges de l'Alcazar (1989) about these much-loved fleapits and the kind of people who used to haunt them, as Tavernier recalls the modern American Westerns and crimes films he used to see, as well as older French films like Jean Delannoy's Macao, l'enfer du jeu (1939). a Sternbergian melodrama about the Sino-Japanese War with Erich von Stroheim, Sessue Hayakawa and Mireille Balin. He remembers liking its honest approach to sex and comments on the Roger Vitrac dialogue and the fact that Delannoy had to replace Von Stroheim with reshot scenes with Pierre Renoir during the Occupation so as not to upset the Nazis.

This refernece brings Tavernier to another hero in Jean Renoir. He recalls being stunned by the Marseillaise sequence at the outbreak of the Great War in La Grande illusion (1937) and being so aware that he was witnessing a new kind of French cinema that he remained in his seat and watched it twice more before reluctantly heading home. Tavernier was also taken by Une Partie de campagne (1936), a much-troubled featurette was only released in a truncated form in 1946, and La Marseillaise (1938), which he claims to have been the first historical film with the people as the heroes. But he was also fascinated by the shooting in depth in La Règle du jeu (1939) and the camera movements in Le Crime de Monsieur Lange (1935), which brought a subtle lyricism to lengthy takes that locked the characters into their environments and allowed Renoir to flit between facial close-ups as the dramatic focus of a scene shifted.

In Toni (1935), Renoir anticipated neo-realism and Tavernier finds echo in its dining-table sequence with one in La Chienne (1931), which starred the incomparable Michel Simon. He notes the contribution made to the latter by editor Marguerite Renoir and to Jacques Prévert's script for Le Crime de Monsieur Lange. But he lingers on Renoir's relationship with Jean Gabin, who was so popular with French audiences in the 1930s that his roles were almost a barometer for national self-esteem. Tavernier recalls meeting Gabin and relates an anecdote about Renoir instructing Curt Courant how to light a footplate sequence in La Bête humaine (1938). He also shows the kitchen scene at the train drivers' digs to contrast the Zolaesque realism with the romanticism he brings to Gabin's scenes with Simone Simon.

According to Tavernier, Renoir respected his Impressionist father's painting style. but had his own approach to framing and composing shots. Yet, as the `Petite Navire' sequence in La Grande illusion and the tenement shooting in Le Crime de Monsieur Lange reveal, Renoir was also a master of improvisation and Tavernier highlights how the camera movements around the windows overlooking the courtyard were inspired by a spur of the moment decision that brought the scene to more vivid life. We see a clip of Renoir explaining his technique and how it used to free actors and cameramen to shoot in long, fluid takes that retained the integrity of the action.

It saddens Tavernier, therefore, that this generous, intelligent and intuitive artist should have written letters of an anti-semitic nature in 1940 and he avers that it's probably a relief for Renoir's reputation that he left for the United States so that he didn't do anything he might later have regretted during the Vichy era. Nevertheless, Gabin never forgave him for his views and perceived bigotry and always qualified acknowledgements of his artistry with blunt assessments of his personality. Screenwriter Charles Spaak supposedly told Tavernier that Renoir had a fondness for Italian Fascism, but he was eventually forgiven and returned to make French Cancan (1955), which saw him reunite with the ever-excellent Gabin and make bracing use of colour during the exuberant dance set-pieces.

Akin to James Cagney and Spencer Tracy in Hollywood, Gabin epitomised working-class machismo in film like Marcel Carné's Le Jour se lève (1939), in which he co-starred with Arletty and Jules Berry. In Julien Duvivier's La Belle équipe (1936), he was the spirit of the Popular Front, while in Jean Grémillon's Remorques (1941) he embodied the embattled wartime soul. Even when he played a deserter in Carné's Le Quai des brumes (1938), Gabin remained a man of the people. Yet he also spent much of the war in Hollywood and told Tavernier that he was more use there than in being manipulated into a false hero during the Occupation.

Eventually, however, Gabin joined the Free French Forces and fought in North African before participating in the Liberation of Paris. Yet he struggled to regain his status, despite films like René Clément's Au-delà des grilles (1949). He later reflected on his wartime adventures in Gilles Grangier's Sous le Signe du taureau (1969), but never shied away in interviews from what he called his black curtain period. Tavernier blames Marlene Dietrich for prolonging this, as their affair kept Gabin from making a potentially triumphal comeback in Carné's Les Portes de la nuit (1946). However, he returned to his trademark everyman roles in the likes of Georges Lacombe's La Nuit est ma royaume (1951), in which he drove another steam train. Tavernier also highlights Grangier's Gas-Oil (1955), Henri Verneuil's Des gens sans importance (1956) and Pierre Granier-Deferre's Le Chat (1971) and declares Gabin's performance in Henri Decoin's La Vérité sur Bébé Donge (1952) to be one of his bravest, as he was cast against type as an anti-hero.

He was only marginally more sympathetic in Becker's Touchez pas au grisbi and Julien Duvivier's Voici le temps des assassins (1956). But, once again, Gabin came to embody a new France in Claude Autant-Lara's En Cas de malheur (1958), in which he resisted the charms of Brigitte Bardot. Getting too old to play the romantic lead, he displayed a gnarled gravity in items like Grangier's Le Désordre et la nuit (1958). in which he play a vice cop who develops a soft spot for drug-addicted prostitute Nadja Tiller. Autant-Lara exploited Gabin's little-used comic gifts in La Traversée de Paris (1956), yet still gave him a scene in which he rails against those who had betrayed France during the war. Around this time, the fiftysomething Gabin moved into grand homme roles in Verneuil's Le Président (1961), while assuming the part of Georges Simenon's great detective in Jean Delannoy's Maigret tends une piège (1958). But Gabin also showed a commendable lack of vanity, as a has been opposite rising star Jean-Paul Belmondo in Verneuil's Un Singe en hiver (1962). Indeed, directors like Henri Decoin were just pleased to have him in thrillers like Razzia sur la chnouf (1955) because he was the consummate professional and knew how to play a scene better than any writer or director. Tavernier recalls Gabin needing to do things his own way, but he remains a fan of the bluff charm that helped define the French cinema of his heyday.

Curiously, Tavernier begins his analysis of Marcel Carné with his penultimate fictional feature, Les Assassins de l'ordre (1971), to suggest that he always managed to create a credible world, in spite of leaving the writing of his films to others. Over clips from Le Jour se lève and Hôtel du Nord (1939), Tavernier recalls scenarist Henri Jeanson declaring that Carné was a difficult man to work with because he was obsessed with creating atmosphere. We see footage of Jeanson complaining about Carné being fussy about casting decisions and initially being unconvinced by the iconic actress, Arletty. But their collaborations on the aforementioned and Les Enfants du paradis (1945) suggest that Carné could mould raw talent, although he was happier working with natural screen actors like Louis Jouvet, who is seen in a scene from Hôtel du Nord. But the cantankerous Carné also fell out with his favoured scriptwriter, Jacques Prévert, when he refused his suggestion of Simone Simon for the lead in Les Portes de la nuit.

Ultimately, the part went to Nathalie Nattier, whom Tavernier considers a disaster. But, if Carné wasn't a born writer and didn't always get his casting decisions right, he had an eye for detail and a feel for authentic characters. He was also prepared to discuss proscribed topics like the Spanish Civil War in Hôtel du Nord, which even contained a gay character. Moreover, he appreciated the benefits of studio realism and forged a valuable link with production designer Alexander Trauner, whose street set for Le Jour se lève is shown in construction so that it isolated Gabin's fugitive anti-hero. We also see the scene of Jules Berry tumbling down the staircase after being shot, which is accompanied by the reflections of future director Claude Sautet in a Positif review that extols Carné's virtue as a director of people and places.

While in Poetic Realist territory, Tavernier also explores the work of composer Maurice Jaubert, whom he claims understood the use of a music in cinema better than anyone else. We hear the jaunty folk tune as Gabin strolls along a street in Hôtel du Nord and the ingenious use of accordion and saxophone in Jean Vigo's L'Atalante (1934), with the joke about Michel Simon being able to play a record with his fingernail remaining a gem eight decades later. There's a melancholic melodic sweetness to the soundtrack of René Clair's Quatorze juillet (1933), while, over a scene from Duvivier's Un Carnet du bal (1937), Tavernier notes that Jaubert instinctively felt that music lay at the heart of a film because it could convey emotions without needing words. To prove the point, he contrasts the swelling romance of the ballroom dream sequence with the pulsating percussion used in Le Jour se lève, as Gabin paces his garret room with his fate seemingly sealed before the bullets start to shatter the window.

Tavernier hails the 40 year-old Jaubert's death while fighting for his country a tragedy. But he was glad to be able to talk Truffaut into using some of the music from L'Atalante in L'Histoire d'Adèle H. (1975) and was even more delighted when some of the music from his favourite French composers was finally released on LPs. Moving on, Tavernier discusses the way Hollywood tends to use orchestras, while there is much greater nuance in Narciso Yepes's solo guitar in René Clément's Jeux interdits (1952). Jean Wiener's mournful harmonica in Touchez pas au grisbi and Miles Daviss's soaring trumpet in Louis Malle's Lift to the Scaffold (1958). Tavernier also admires the way Robert Bresson employed a Mozart mass in A Man Escaped (1958) before commending the work of Georges Auric on Jean Cocteau's La Belle et la bête (1946), Georges van Parys on Max Ophüls's Madame de... (1953), Jean-Jacques Grunewald on Bresson's Les Anges du péché (1943) and Jacques Ibert on Maurice Tourneur's Justin de Marseille (1935). He also states that film music is one of the ways in which French and American cultures differ, as French scores owe more to modern composers, while Hollywood's are more rooted in the classical tradition.

We hear a Joseph Kosma harmonica strain playing over a scene in Carné's Les Portes de la Nuit, as Yves Montand begins to sing along. Kosma wrote several songs with Jacques Prévert and Tavernier notes the Berlin influence of Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill on his work. The lyricism of his score for Renoir's Une Partie de campagne captures the bliss of a summer day beside the river, while composer Antoine Duhamel suggests that his marches in La Grand illusion managed to be anti-militaristic. The emotion surges as Gabin kisses and nearly throttles Blanchette Brunoy by the trackside in La Bête humaine, while it playfully counterpoints Jean-Louis Barrault's mimed adoration of the statuesque Arletty in Les Enfants du paradis. Ending this section, we see a clip from Henri Calef's lesser-known Bagarres (1948), as the music helps build the tension as Jean Murat climbs the stairs to menace Maria Casares, and Tavernier notes that Kosma only came to film because Prévert wanted him to compose his song in Le Crime de Monsieur Lange and Tavernier is baffled that it isn't better known.

Moving into the realms of commercial cinema, Tavernier alights upon American actor Eddie Constantine, who became a cult figure in France as troubleshooter Lemmy Caution in films like Jean Sacha's Cet Homme est dangereux (1953). Considering him a breath of fresh air n postwar cinema, Tavernier lauds the dialogue of Marcel Duhamel over a scene of Constantine driving a speedboat and urging his female companion to speak French because the public doesn't like subtitles. Tavernier is also a big fan of Sacha, who started out doing distinctive caricatures of Hollywood stars and later edited films for Max Ophüls and Orson Welles and Tavernier sees the latter's influence in Cet Homme est dangereux and credits cinematographer Marcell Weiss for the expressionist lighting and oblique angles in the noirish visuals.

In Bernard Borderie's La Môme vert-de-gris (1946), Constantine escapes from a fire and finds a dead body before the viewpoint shifts to a subjective shot that consciously hommaged a scene in Delmer Daves's Dark Passage (1947). Tavernier also notes the violence of the action, as Lemmy shoots one man, hits another with a hammer and snaps the neck of a third. But the witty voiceover also shows Lemmy talking to himself in order to steel his confidence and thanking himself for his good wishes. You can almost feel Truffaut, Chabrol and Godard hugging themselves in the darkness as they watched such gleeful self-reflexivity.

John Berry also worked with Welles as an actor in the Mercury Theatre, but sought sanctuary in France after coming under HUAC suspicion for directing John Garfield in He Ran All the Way (1951). He made his mark with another Constantine thriller, Ça va barder (1955), which Tavernier considers one of the first great French noirs. Its dialogue was penned by Jacques-Laurent Bost, a lover of Simone de Beauvoir and the brother of the more famous screenwriter Pierre, who forged a partnership with Jean Aurenche that was despised by Truffaut, but admired by Tavernier, who collaborated with the pair on four occasions). He also enthuses about Jacques Lemare's American-influenced imagery and the part played by character actors Jean Carmet, André Versini, Clément Harari, Jean Danet and Roger Saget in keeping the action cracklingly authentic.

Tavernier regrets that Constantine made more formulaic films as time went by, but he enjoyed a revival after Michel Deville's Lucky Jo (1964) and Godard's iconic Alphaville (1965). This mention of the nouvelle vague leads into Truffaut's Les 400 coups (1959) and Tirez sur la pianiste (1961), which Tavernier saw when he was writing reviews and thinking about making films himself with his okl lycée friend, Volker Schlondörff. They spent a lot of time at Henri Langlois's Cinémathèque Française in the Rue d'Ulm and Tavernier recalls having his glasses broken during a demonstration to prevent Langlois's dismissal by culture minister, whose Spanish Civil War classic, L'Espoir (1938), was one of the films that most surprised Tavernier at the Cinémathèque, along with Duvivier's Allo Berlin? Ici Paris! (1932), which made audacious use of skewed point-of-view shots.

It was while he was enjoying Langlois's eclectic programming that Tavernier met Yves Martin and Bernard Martinand, with whom he formed the Nickel-Odeon ciné-club that tried to show new and older films in need to reclamation. Among them were Delannoy's Le Garçon sauvage (1951), which had been written by Jacques Lourcelles and Henri Jeanson, and Jacques Panijel's Octobre à Paris (1962), which was banned by the authorities for its discussion of the Algerian War. Tavernier recalls how handling such marginalised films taught him a lot about the need to preserve nitrate films. But he also recalls the pride the trio took in unearthing obscure titles and in rediscovering Edmond T. Gréville, who worked in both France and Britain.

In Remous (1934), Gréville explored sexual impotency after athlete Maurice Maillot is injured in a car crash and wife Jeanne Boitel drives him to suicide by ogling other men. During one kiss sequence, Gréville resorts to almost avant-garde fast cutting to convey the unleashed passions. In Menaces (1939), he considered the threat posed by Hitler in a story set in a hotel for refugees, with a shot of faces peering accusingly through the clear squares of a glass door being matched by the Janus mask worn by the mysterious Erich von Stroheim, who is torn between peace and war. Unsurprisingly, the film was banned during the Occupation. But when Gréville came to film an epilogue after the Liberation, stars like Ginette Leclerc and Jean Galland had been interned for collaborating with the Nazi film company, Continental (which was the subject of Tavernier's fine 2001 film, Laissez Passer) and he had to use lookalikes.

Gréville produced another brooding study of sexual frustration in Le Diable souffle (1947), which saw cinematographer Henri Alekan make fine use of the Rhône countryside, as Charles Vanel and Spanish fugitive Jean Chevrier fight over Héléna Bossis. We also get a clip from one of Gréville's undervalued British films, Noose (1948), which has a palpable sense of noir menace. However, he died young and the ciné-club contributed towards the cost of his funeral. René Clair (who had directed Sous les toits de Paris, 1929) wrote a letter in praise of Gréville and Tavernier subsequently helped to publish the novel he had written at 19 and his memoirs.

Taking the sophistication level up a notch, Tavernier now moves on to Jean-Pierre Melville. whose Bob le flambeur (1956) he had first saw in a cinema next to a strip club. He recalls the ease with which the opening shifted from Montmartre to Pigalle and the smooth performance of Roger Duchesne in the title role and the sexy innocence of Isabelle Corey. The same air of noirish melodrama informed Deux Hommes dans Manhattan (1959), which Tavernier reviewed with enthusiasm in L'Etrave. This led to him interviewing Melville at Studios Jenner and he remains in awe of the first director he ever met and remembers trembling in his presence.

We see clips from Le Doulos (1963), as we learn that Melville was an insomniac who used to write at night and hear that he sent a letter to Tavernier's parents informing them of his enthusiasm for cinema when offering him a job as an assistant on Léon Morin, prêtre (1961) alongside Volker Schlondörff, whose cameo as a German soldier is shown. We also hear a recording of a row between Melville and Jean-Paul Belmondo on the set of L'aîné des Ferchaux (1963), as the latter disliked the way the director threw his weight around with the crew. During the shooting of L'Armée des ombres (1969), things became so strained that Melville used assistant Georges Pellegrin to pass on instructions to Lino Ventura and his cast mates. But Melville was a meticulous craftsman and Schlondörff explains in an archive interview how he measured precisely when composing images. He also made imaginative use of the Jenner studio, with corridors, offices, staircases and doorways cropping up in various guises in his pictures.

We see clips from Le Samouraï (1967), Le Cercle rouge (1970) and Un Flic (1972), as Schlondörff recalls how literally Melville treated book adaptations and how well he paced dialogue sequences like those involving Emmanuelle Riva and Bemondo and Ventura and Simone Signoret. He was fond of depicting bars and made evocative use of mirrors and used long takes, while also borrowing elements from American noirs like André de Toth's Crime Wave (1953). However, the scene in Le Doulos involving Serge Reggiani and René Lefèvre in the attic by the railway influened Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds (2009).

According to Tavernier, Melville created his own melancholic world in which realism and melodrama overlapped like a cross between Robert Bresson and William Wyler. But his restraint in the big moments made his films seem authentic, especially as he rarely used music to counterpoint them and usually filmed them simply without directorial flourish. He might have been an awkward customer, but Melville had a singular vision and remained rigorously faithful to it Despite proving a poor assistant director, Tavernier made a better impression as a press officer for producer Georges de Beauregard's Rome-Paris Films on titles like Jacques Rozier's Adieu Philippine (1963). This job enabled him to get to know Godard and Chabrol, while also meeting idols like John Ford and promoting landmark features like Agnès Varda's Cleo de 5 à 7 (1962), which he still commends for its insights and freshness. We see clips from Chabrol's Landru (1963) and Godard's Pierrot le fou (1965), on which Tavernier got to watch Raoul Coutard in action and meet the Hollywood maverick Samuel Fuller. He also discovered the effort that composer Antoine Duhamel put into his score. Yet in order to satisfy co-producer Carlo Ponti, the music that Georges Delarue produced for Le Mépris (1963) was replaced in the Italian version by a score by Piero Piccioni.

Tavernier considers one of the best films he promoted for De Beauregard to be Pierre Schoenendorffer's Le 317ème section (1965), which is set in Indochina in the 1950s and among the most unflinchingly gruelling war films ever made. Howver, he admires Claude Sautet in the attic by the railways Classe tous risques (1960), which he ranks among the finest polar crime films. We see a clip of the street robbery with Lino Ventura before moving on to Jean-Paul Rappeneau's La Vie de château (1966) and Maurice Labro's Le Fauve est lâché (1959), which Sautet refine his writing skills. Sautet took his directorial debut from a novel by ex-crook José Giovanni (who also inspired Becker's Le Trou) and took a risk in casting comic actor Dario Moreno (known for lighter fare like John Berry's Oh! Qué mambo, 1959) and turned him into a heavy.

In particular, Tavernier praises the post office scene and the street finale and lauds Sautet's control of his story and actors in Les Choses de la vie (1970) and Max et les ferrailleurs (1971), which both featured Michel Piccoli and Romy Schneider. Tavernier explains that Sautet's scripts seemed rigidly formal, but he liked visual fluidity and also knew his music. Indeed, he co-wrote the theme for the latter with Philippe Sarde. But, at this juncture, Tavernier decides that he has reached journey's end (for now) and we leave him outside the cinema museum in Lyon discussing what native sons Auguste and Louis Lumières would have shouted to start the Cinématographe rolling for the first moving pictures in the 1890s.

This insert running alongside the closing credits could be taken as a covert advertisement for Lumière! (2016), Cannes supremo Thierry Frémaux's portmanteau of restored pioneering flickers, which Tavernier co-produced. But it seem brings proceedings back to the birthplace of both cinema and Bertrand Tavernier and beckons cinephile to embark upon their own exploration of a glorious screen tradition. Sadly, many of the titles cited here and expertly juxtaposed by editors Guy Lecorne and Marie Deroudille are not available on disc in this country and one or two remain rarities in France. But those with deep pockets will be richly rewarded by following Tavernier's 95 recommendations, as he knows his stuff and is not so hung up on trendy critical theories as to limit his selections to art cinema.

Doubtless, some will lament the absence of silent masters like Georges Méliès, Max Linder, Louis Feuillade, Louis Delluc, Germaine Dulac, Jean Epstein and Marcel L'Herbier, as well as such divisive figures as Abel Gance, Sacha Guitry and Marcel Pagnol. But it's to be hoped that they will feature in the tele-sequel, along with Jean Grémillon, Max Ophüls, Robert Bresson, Georges Franju, Jacques Tati, Alain Resnais, Louis Malle. Jacques Demy. Eric Rohmer, Jacques Rivette, Maurice Pialat and Bertrand Blier. It will also be interesting to see whether Tavernier finds room for more women film-makers, as well as middlebrows like Roger Vadim and Claude Lelouch and such broad comics as Fernandel, Bourvil and Luis de Funès. Equally intriguing will be which foreign-born directors he decides to discuss and how up to date he will elect to go, as there is nothing on view here beyond the mid-1960s. However, he has done enough to earn our trust with this splendidly astute and sincerely personal introduction and leave us eagerly awaiting what will surely be his magnum opus.

1) I AM NOT YOUR NEGRO.

Raoul Peck provides an inspired insight into the mind of writer and activist James Baldwin in I Am Not Your Negro. Born in Haiti, Peck started making shorts in 1982 and first came to attention when his debut feature, The Man By the Shore (1993), screened at Cannes. Until now, he has been best known for Lumumba (2000), which chronicled the power grab that followed the Congo securing independence from Belgium in 1960, and Sometimes in April (2005), which centred on the Rwandan Genocide. But, having reflected on the aftermath of the 2010 Haitian earthquake in Fatal Assistance (2013) and Murder in Pacot (2014), Peck turns his attention to the ongoing struggle for racial equality in the United States in this Oscar-nominated meld of interview, archive footage and film clips that is linked by extracts read by Samuel L. Jackson from the unfinished manuscript for Remember This House, which reflects upon the sacrifices made by Baldwin's murdered Civil Rights friends, Medgar Evers, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr.

This remarkable documentary opens with a startling clip from The Dick Cavett Show in 1968, in which the genial, liberal-leaning host asks James Baldwin if he had become more hopeful about the status of `the Negro' in American society since the passing of the Civil Rights Act four years earlier. Allowing himself a wry smile, Baldwin laments the use of such pejorative language before averring that the situation for black people is pretty dire across the entire planet. A blast of Buddy Guy's furious protest song, `Damn Right, I've Got the Blues', over a montage of still images depicting black protesters being brutalised by the police suggests that things have scarcely improved five decades on.

In a letter to agent Jay Acton proposing Remember This House in 1979, Baldwin states that he wishes to celebrate the achievements of his friends, Medger, Malcolm and Martin, while also castigating those who betrayed their ideals and the martyrdom. Clips follow of the 26 year-old King backing the 1955 Montgomery Bus Boycott and Leander Perez of the White Citizens Council denouncing the enrolment of nine black students at Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas in 1957. As troops are called in to keep order, Baldwin recalls seeing newspaper pictures of 15 year-old Dorothy Counts being spat on as she walked to school in Charlotte, North Carolina and realising that he could no longer fight the cause from Paris.

Caricatured images from contemporary advertisements and illustrations show over Big Bill Broonzy's `Black, Brown and White', as Baldwin admits to missing little about America during his exile. But he felt he needed to reconnect with his family and the folks from the Harlem neighbourhood of his youth. He eulogises about the way black faces light up when they smile and the unique sense of style that he first became aware of when he was about seven and he saw a black woman in a store who seemed as beautiful to him as Joan Crawford had been in Harry Beaumont's Dance, Fools, Dance (1931). White teacher Orilla `Bill' Miller had an even greater impact, as she encouraged the 10 year-old Baldwin to read and express himself. She also took him to plays and films like Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack's King Kong (1933), which made him wonder why white people detested blacks and why he couldn't bring himself to hate whites (even though they made no secret of their loathing of his beloved teacher).

Baldwin resented the fact that the only people who looked like him in movies were loathed stereotypes like Willie `Sleep`n'Eat' Best in Frank R. Strayer's The Monster Walks (1932) and Stepin Fetchit in W. Forest Crunch's Richard's Answer (1945). He also refused to see the title character in Harry A. Pollard's Uncle Tom's Cabin (1927) as a hero because he opted not to take vengeance in his own hands, unlike John Wayne in John Ford's Stagecoach (1939). But Baldwin couldn't identify with white men whose sense of entitlement to claim the land as their own made them his enemy. No wonder he recalled with such dread seeing black janitor Clinton Rosemond (who resembled his father) being intimidated by the police in Mervyn LeRoy's They Won't Forget (1937), as he knew that films were a reflection of the country in which he lived. Speaking to the Cambridge Union in 1965, he recalls the shock he felt when, around the age of seven, he saw himself in the Indians being killed by Gary Cooper. To Baldwin's mind, therefore, Hollywood was part of a conspiracy to ensure a legend was made out of a massacre in depicting the expansion of the frontier as an epic adventure rather than a crime.

Being a witness to such felonies as the murder of Medger, Malcolm and Martin proved tougher than Baldwin had anticipated, however, and he confides in a letter to Acton that he was not looking forward to interviewing their widows and children. He recalls his first encounter with Malcolm, when he unnerved Baldwin by staring at him from the front row during a lecture, and curses the white misconceptions of this noble man that resulted in his assassination. By contrast, he first met Medger when he asked him to participate in the investigation into the murder of a young black man.

Baldwin was not a Muslim or a Christian and steered clear of both the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (as he felt it imposed class distinctions) and the Black Panthers, as he didn't want African-American kids to believe that all white men were devils. He didn't play an active role in confronting bigotry on the streets or in organising marches. Instead, he remained at large in order to write articles like `Letter From a Region in My Mind', which conveyed his impressions of the struggle as a witness with a duty to ensure the truth was widely disseminated. As a consequence, he came on to the radar of FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover, who used a 1966 memorandum to deputy Alan Rosen to highlight the fact that he was `an homosexual' who was capable of committing acts that could undermine the security of the state.

Three years earlier, the police under Eugene `Bull' O'Connor had used force to control a non-violent protest in Birmingham, Alabama and Baldwin had been a guest of Dr Kenneth Clark on a TV programme entitled The Negro and the American Promise, in which Malcolm had accused Martin of being a latterday Uncle Tom for not fighting back. Yet, Baldwin believes that his friends had ceased to be poles apart and had come to share a common vision by the time Malcolm was shot. He mourns the fact that they died before change came (all under the age of 40), although footage of the riots Ferguson, Missouri in August 2014 questions the extent to which things had become any different for black people in the intervening half century.

During his segment on the show, Baldwin had grieved for `the death of the heart' and branded the cruel white majority `moral monsters' for their inability to understand the pain caused by slavery, segregation and racial supremacy and their refusal to accept him as a human being. On the Florida Forum programme in 1963, he damned John and Robert Kennedy for being as apathetic and ignorant about the realities of the black experience as any other whites, as they made no effort to explore the other side of the segregated divide. Yet Baldwin felt uncomfortable during this period with being `the Great Black Hope of the Great White Father' and a non-racist in comparison to the supposedly bigoted Malcolm.

Another potent spokesperson of the day was playwright Lorraine Hansberry, whose hit play A Raisin in the Sun, was brought to the screen in 1961 by white director Daniel Petrie and black actor Sidney Poitier. Baldwin cursed her dying of cancer at the age of 34, recalls with pride their meeting with Attorney General Bobby Kennedy and how she had shamed him for dismissing the suggestion that America could be transformed if his brother escorted a black child to an integrated school. She also hoped that the photograph of policemen standing on the neck of a Birmingham woman was not a true reflection of the civilisation they were shaping.

His admiration for her was matched by his esteem for Medger and he remembers their last meeting before he flew to Puerto Rico to work on a play. He heard he had been gunned down in his car port in front of his wife and children on the car radio on a beautiful day. Bob Dylan sang a tribute in `Only a Pawn in Their Game' in DA Pennebaker's Don't Look Back (1967), but Baldwin lost a friend who had sustained him in a battle he found exhausting, if only because he was so often dismissed as an eccentric, while white patriots like John Wayne were dubbed heroes for spouting wild theories no one dared to challenge.

According to Baldwin, white America had no idea what to do with its black population and suspects many wished they could implement their own Final Solution. The problem was that blacks were nowhere near as docile as the whites supposed and Baldwin reveals that growing up on the streets of New York taught him a toughness that was replicated in very different environments across the country. Over photos of Tamir Rice, Darius Simmons, Trayvon Martin, Aiyana Stanley-Jones, Christopher McCray, Cameron Tillman and Amir Brooks (who all died young in the early 21st century), Baldwin remembers the bodies of kids of his own generation piling up because they dared to assert their right to exist and challenge the basis tenets of the white world's power structure. But the problem is not just one of race, as people of the same blood are unwilling to stand beside each other for fear of reprisal.

Echoing this contention, a clip from John M. Stahl's Imitation of Life (1934) shows light-skinned Fredi Washington hiding behind her book because she fears mother Louise Beavers will betray her racial origins to her classmates. Indeed, Baldwin claims (over old photos of black and white slaves in New Orleans) that few of the ancestors of America's assimilated populations came to the New World willingly. But the whites have remained terrified of their private selves and have invented `the Negro problem' to `safeguard their purity' and, as a consequence, they have become `criminals and monsters'. Scenes with Sidney Poitier and Richard Widmark from Joseph L. Mankiewicz's No Way Out (1950) and with Tony Curtis in Stanley Kramer's The Defiant Ones (1958) strengthen Baldwin's argument that America suffers from a bottomless emotional poverty and a terror of human interaction that generates a paralysis that prevents any departure from a hideous status quo.

As Curtis and Poitier fight while chained at the wrist, Baldwin derides the premise of the screenplay, as it misunderstands the basic nature of their antipathy. because the black man's hatred is rooted in rage and the white man's in fear. He also points out that black audiences yelled at Poitier in disbelief for leaping off the train when Curtis fails to clamber aboard, as they wanted him to free himself and not reassure the white boy that he had no reason to feel loathed and afraid. Over a commercial in which a black man sings inside a banana skin, Baldwin notes that Hollywood is scared of the fact that Poitier and Harry Belafonte are sex symbols and goes out of its way to neutralise their appeal in pictures like Kramer's Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (1967), although he suspects that this is the last time the studios can get away with an interracial romance without letting the lovers kiss.

Poitier did more than merely reassure in Norman Jewison's In the Heat of the Night (1967), however, as he actively confronts Rod Steiger's bigoted sheriff. Yet, during their climactic train scene, the smiles exchanged were the closest cinema could come at the time to a fadeout kiss between two men - although this was more a reflection of reconciliation than sexual attraction. But heterosexual relationships between blacks and whites were equally frowned upon and, over a dance clip from Horace Ové's Pressure (1976), Baldwin recalls having to keep his distance from a white female friend whenever they went out together.

According to Baldwin, people can't stand too much reality and many whites would have been deeply disturbed by The Secrets of Selling the Negro Market (1954), a short that was sponsored by the publishers of Ebony magazine to encourage companies to advertise their wares in the African-American media. Yet, while Bobby Kennedy insisted that things were improving at such a pace that a time would soon come when a black man could become president of the United States, Baldwin told his 1965 Cambridge audience that his pronouncement was greeted with derision in Harlem, as blacks had been in the country for 400 years and were less than impressed with being told in a patronising manner that they might be allowed a crack at the top job if they behaved themselves. Nevertheless, Peck ends this segment with slow-motion footage of Barack and Michelle Obama waving to the crowds on his Inauguration Day with one black and one white bodyguard walking behind them and Bill Broonzy's `Just a Dream (On My Mind)' playing on the soundtrack.

Speaking in Cambridge, Baldwin states that the national economy has long relied on the exploitation of black labour. Yet this has convinced the whites that a ninth of the population is inferior to them. In his eyes, however, his ancestors had a crucial stake in the forging of the nation and that it should be entitled to an equal share in its prosperity. Peck cuts from the standing ovation Baldwin received from the students to a montage of stills of the famous faces that were present at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom on 28 August 1963. That evening, Baldwin was joined on television by Marlon Brando, Joseph Mankiewicz, Charlton Heston, Sidney Poitier and Harry Belafonte, with the latter declaring that the success of the campaign depends on the whites who have tried to hide away from the issues facing up to the realities being perpetrated in their name and doing something about it. But Baldwin later wrote that what was needed was for white citizens to grow up and for pampered, privileged individuals like John Wayne to wake up to the truth.

Baldwin was dining in London with his sister when the news came that Malcolm had been gunned down at a rally in February 1965. His death did much to bolster support for a more radical approach and, speaking in July 1967, Black Panther H. Rap Brown stated bluntly that violence was as American as cherry pie. Following riots in Oakland, California, Baldwin guested with Dick Cavett and avowed that Malcolm might still be alive if black people lobbying for freedom were treated in the same way as Irish, Poles or Jews making the same demand.

Such chillingly persuasive words contrast starkly with the message contained in the 1960 US Savings Bond short, The Land We Love, which celebrates the fun white folks can have beneath Liberty's torch. But Peck intercuts footage of the August 1965 riots in the Watts district of Los Angeles to show how hollow the commentary sounds. Baldwin complains, with complete justification, that democracy means nothing if its promises only apply to the privileged few and not everyone. He opines that television perpetuates social myths and stereotypes and lulls people into accepting that they are sharing in the good life when the daily experience of the majority is brutal and ugly. Moreover, cornball quiz and talk shows reduce the ability to face reality and amend it.

Back on the Cavett Show, the host brings out Yale philosophy professor Paul Weiss to join Baldwin and singer Elly Stone. He disagrees with much of what Baldwin has said and asks why he always has to view matters in terms of colour when he has much more in common with white authors than black men who have no time for books. But Baldwin counters that he left the USA in 1948 because he feared for his life in everyday situations because cops and bosses didn't want him there. He could have gone to Hong Kong or Timbuktu, but he went to Paris and it gave him the chance to write without having to look over his shoulder. As the audience applauds, Peck shows images of black men being harassed by the police before Baldwin reveals that he believes the Christian church is as segregated as the rest of society. When Weiss tries to protest, Baldwin declares that the country's institutions are all set up to keep the black population in its place and allow the white to use whatever repressive force they deem necessary to protect their own interests.

Over another clip from Uncle Tom's Cabin, Baldwin accuses every Western nation of peddling a humanist lie that falsifies their history and deprives them of moral authority. As happy white folks frolic on a `Once a Year Day' in George Abbott and Stanley Donen's The Pajama Game (1957), Baldwin muses that they have become so used to enjoying the benefits of life that they no longer dare ask who has to suffer for their pleasure and, as a consequence, they have no idea how mutinous the underclass has become. As Peck shows recent footage of cops employing rough tactics, Baldwin suggests that a society that depends so heavily on coercion is close to collapsing and a clip from Robert Siodmak's Custer of the West (1967) and a photograph of the battlefield at Wounded Knee in 1890 illustrate the contention that force never works the way the ruling class thinks it does, as the amount of duress required betrays the strength of the adversary and the fear and panic of the oppressor.

While Baldwin was living in Palm Springs and working on a biopic of Malcolm X with Billy Dee Williams, he learned that Martin has been shot in the head. Other than weeping tears of helpless fury, he remembers little about the remainder of the day. At the funeral, however, he steeled himself because he suspected if he started to cry he would not be able to stop. Sammy Davis held his arm when he felt his emotions rising and he reminded himself that `the story of the Negro in America is the story of America'. Yet, while the American way of life has failed to make people happier or better, Baldwin remains optimistic that something can still be done to make a transition without bloodshed, even though too many people with the power to make the key decisions would rather protect their profits and bolster their security.

Over an extract of a teenage gunman going on the rampage in Gus Van Sant's Elephant (2003), Baldwin laments that America is not the land of the free and is only sporadically the home of the brave. He finds it astonishing that the black population has not succumbed to raging paranoia, although he is equally surprised when people accuse him of being bitter. As we see footage of Rodney King being beaten in March 1991, as Baldwin says that there are two levels of experience that can be summed up on one side by Ray Charles and on the other by Gary Cooper (seen in Billy Wilder's Love in the Afternoon, 1957) and Doris Day (David Butler's Lullaby of Broadway, 1951), whom Baldwin dubs `two of the most grotesque appeals to innocence the world has ever seen'. As Day ponders her new beau in Daniel Mann's Lover Come Back (1961), Peck match cuts to a female lynch victim dangling from a tree and Baldwin declares that it's impossible to keep black people in ghettos without the jailer becoming monstrous and the penned in gaining a superior knowledge of their opponent.

As Baldwin wisely states, not everything that has been faced can be changed. But nothing can be changed until it has been faced and this is his challenge for America. `History is not the past,' he continues, `it is the present. We carry our history with us. We are our history. If we pretend otherwise we literally are criminals.' He dismisses the notion that the world has ever been white and brands `white' a metaphor for power and the Chase Manhattan Bank. In closing, he tells Cavett that he is an optimist and that the future of the country depends on the whites working out why they needed the blacks in the first place and why they chose to treat him so appallingly for four centuries. Once they have the correct answer, the United States can finally move on.

In some ways, this is a frustrating film, as it keeps throwing up topics that need exploring in greater detail. There's only patchy biographical detail on Baldwin and his achievements as a man of letters. We also learn little about Medger Evers and how his approach to the cause differed from those of Martin Luther King and Malcolm X. Indeed, Peck presumes a good deal of foreknowledge and, in the process, exposes the ignorance of many ashamed viewers. But, while images like the one of Malcolm laughing with Muhammad Ali makes one wish for more Baldwiniain insights into the Nation of Islam (and the Black Panthers), they also highlight the need for a major documentary series on the black experience in America that could combine the talents of Peck and such provocative US-based film-makers Eva DuVernay, Ezra Edelman, Spike Lee, Julie Dash, Cheryl Dunye and John Singleton.

Nevertheless, this is a magnificent documentary. At one point, Baldwin says, `to look around the United States today is enough to make prophets and angels weep'. An entire nation should hang its head in shame because not only does the same situation persist in 2017, but it's also likely to deteriorate in the foreseeable future. The real crime, however, is that the malaise dates back to before the Founding Fathers drew up the Constitution after wrenching independence from the British, as the very people responsible for instituting the heinous mistreatment of the black populace once fled Europe to escape their own forms of prejudice and persecution. Yet, instead of learning from their experience and enshrining tolerance at the heart of their system, they opted to lash out at the easiest target and ease their own pain by inflicting more on the subjugated slaves.

The fury of Kendrick Lamar's closing credit rap, `The Blacker the Berry', is entirely justifiable, therefore. But, while Baldwin could state, `my countrymen were my enemy', Peck is more interested in Baldwin's hope than his despair and, together with editor Alexandra Strauss, he has found archive material and movie clips that deftly complement the case made with such poetic passion in the expertly chosen and delivered texts. In short, this deserves to stand alongside its fellow Oscar nominees, Ava DuVernay's 13th and Ezra Edelman's O.J.: Made in America, as it's a work of life-changing political art and, frankly, it's a privilege to look, listen and learn.