Mike Leigh
Marking Play for Today’s 50th anniversary, Drama Out of a Crisis is a compelling exploration of the series, its origins, achievements, controversies and legacies. Featuring a rich and surprising range of archive extracts and original interviews with many who created the series, including producers Kenith Trodd, Margaret Matheson and Richard Eyre, and directors Mike Leigh, David Hare and Ken Loach.
An epic portrayal of the events surrounding the infamous 1819 Peterloo Massacre, where a peaceful pro-democracy rally at St Peter’s Field in Manchester turned into one of the bloodiest and most notorious episodes in British history. The massacre saw British government forces charge into a crowd of over 60,000 that had gathered to demand political reforms and protest against rising levels of poverty.
Sentimental pirates, blundering policeman, absurd adventures and improbable paradoxes – Gilbert and Sullivan’s dazzling The Pirates of Penzance comes to ENO in a highly anticipated new production from renowned film maker and director Mike Leigh. This much-loved comic opera is a showcase of brilliant humour and razor-sharp wit and features a sparkling score chock-full of memorable melodies and catchy tunes.
In a revealing documentary, Mike Leigh, director of Secrets & Lies, Vera Drake and Abigail's Party among many others, talks to Alan Yentob about a unique body of work and a lifelong struggle to make films on his own terms. On day one of a Mike Leigh film, there is no script, no story and the actors do not know if they will even be in the final film. It is a process that has yielded some of cinema's most celebrated performances, and Leigh's new film Mr Turner is already winning critical acclaim. Actors including Jim Broadbent, Eddie Marsan, Sally Hawkins, Lesley Manville and James Corden give fascinating insights into the director and his distinctive method of working.
Eccentric British painter J.M.W. Turner lives his last 25 years with gusto and secretly becomes involved with a seaside landlady, while his faithful housekeeper bears an unrequited love for him.
Using the words and ideas of great filmmakers, from archival interviews with Alfred Hitchcock and Robert Bresson to new interviews with Mike Leigh, David Lynch, and Jonas Mekas, Oscar-winning filmmaker Chuck Workman shows what these filmmakers and others do that can't be expressed in words - but only in cinema.
Leigh's comedy short follows Gary's (Lee Ingleby) attempt to buy a second-hand car. What should be a straightforward task is turned into something of a quest by various people, including dodgy East End car dealer Perry (Eddie Marsan), Perry's taxi-driver dad (Sam Kelly), a garage owner called Derek (Robert Putt) and, not least, Perry's wife Debbie (Samantha Spiro). Oh, and a couple of twins (Danielle and Nichole Bird) are thrown into the mix to cause further confusion. The narrative's series of gags are shot through with sporting references and images of everyday folk taking part in grassroots sports. The swimmers, joggers, cyclists, five-a-side footballers and the rest underline the importance of sport, however casual, to the population in general and the East End of London in particular in this Olympic year. [Source -- Channel 4]
Mike Leigh’s much praised 2010 tragicomical drama. During a year, a very content couple approaching retirement are visited by friends and family less happy with their lives.
Documentary about François Truffaut who is one of the most respected directors in the history of cinema.
A documentary about Vittorio de Sica with clips of his films and testimonials from friends and family.
A look at a few chapters in the life of Poppy, a cheery, colorful, North London schoolteacher whose optimism tends to exasperate those around her.
A look at the production of Play for Today: Abigail's Party (1977).
Abortionist Vera Drake finds her beliefs and practices clash with the mores of 1950s Britain – a conflict that leads to tragedy for her family.
Penny works at a supermarket and Phil is a gentle taxi-driver. Penny’s love for Phil has run dry and they lead joyless lives with their two children, Rachel, a cleaner, and Rory, who is unemployed and aggressive.
Documentary about Humphrey Jennings, an English documentary filmmaker from the 1930s to 1950.
An interview with British film director Mike Leigh produced for BBC-TV.
After their production "Princess Ida" meets with less-than-stunning reviews, the relationship between Gilbert and Sullivan is strained to breaking. Their friends and associates attempt to get the two to work together again, which opens the way to "The Mikado," one of the duo's greatest successes.
A film director (Adam Rifkin) decides to chart the course of a young actor (Tony Markes) as he tries to make it in Hollywood...
Two young women reunite and rekindle their friendship after having said goodbye at their college graduation, six years earlier.
A middle-aged London factory worker is shocked when the mixed-race daughter she gave up at birth decides to track her down. At first she denies she is her mother. All family members become emotional, as everyone's secrets are exposed.
Theatrical packaging of three comic shorts: Dean Parisot and Steven Wright's "The Appointments of Dennis Jennings" (1988), Michael Moore's "Pets or Meat" (1992), and Mike Leigh's "A Sense of History" (1992).
Jim Broadbent wrote and starred in this short film directed by none other than Mike Leigh. As a member of the landed gentry, the 23rd Earl of Leete has a duty to maintain and expand his lands. Shot in the style and manner of a BBC documentary, Broadbent tells his family history to the crew, who slowly come to realise - as do we - that things are not what they seem.
Just north of London live Wendy, Andy, and their twenty-something twins, Natalie and Nicola. Wendy clerks in a shop, leads aerobics at a primary school, jokes like a vaudevillian, agrees to waitress at a friend's new restaurant and dotes on Andy, a cook who forever puts off home remodeling projects, and with a drunken friend, buys a broken down lunch wagon. Natalie, with short neat hair and a snappy, droll manner, is a plumber; she has a holiday planned in America, but little else. Last is Nicola, odd man out: a snarl, big glasses, cigarette, mussed hair, jittery fingers, bulimic, jobless, and unhappy. How they interact and play out family conflict and love is the film's subject.
Slice-of-life look at a sweet working-class couple in London, Shirley and Cyril, his mother, who's aging quickly and becoming forgetful, mum's ghastly upper-middle-class neighbors, and Cyril's pretentious sister and philandering husband. Shirley wants a baby, but Cyril, who reads Marx and wants the world to be perfect, is reluctant. Cyril's mum locks herself out and must ask her snooty neighbors for help. Then Cyril's sister Valerie stages a surprise party for mum's 70th birthday, a disaster from start to finish. Shirley holds things together, and she and Cyril may put aside her Dutch cap after all.
A short comedy by Mike Leigh about the romance between a young woman and a man who communicates only through jokes and humor...
Two couples, one Catholic, one Protestant, exist on two sides of the chasm that is everyday life in Northern Ireland. Both women are expecting babies, both couples tell offbeat stories, both couples get by with what little they have. Yet Mike Leigh allows his actors to show not how much but how little these two couple have in common. "Four Days in July" is wonderful yet scathing look at the turmoil that has engulfed Northern Ireland for generations.
A working-class family in London's East End is struggling to stay afloat during the recession under Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's premiership. Only the mother Mavis is working; father Frank and the couple's two sons Colin, a timid, chronically shy individual and Mark, an outspoken, headstrong young man, are on the dole. This situation is contrasted by the presence of Mavis's sister Barbara, and her husband John, whose financial and social loftiness appears to be a comfortable facade over the unspoken soreness of a lackluster marriage.
Three postal workers and their dysfunctional families interact over cups of tea and Sunday dinner.
A slow-witted couple decide to start a family.
A window cleaner fancies a sausage roll, but all is not well in the sausage roll factory.
A man relentlessly bombards another man with small talk, while the other man tries to fend for himself while using crutches.
A couple of old friends drown their sorrows together while reveling in the naivety of a young newly-wed.
Writer and Director Mike Leigh discusses the techniques used to create his plays.
Dick and Mandy, a young working class couple, move into a council house in Canterbury, and find Mr. Butcher, one of their former teachers, living next door. Mandy's unmarried sister, Gloria, is constantly dropping in, and will not take any hints that the couple would prefer to be left alone, until her presence finally goads them to action.
Slice-of-life look at class divisions among employees of a brokerage house. Alan, with his portrait of the Queen and love of the peerage; his wife April, who raises cats; youthful and pretentious friends Nigel, Giles, and Anthony, who gather for a wine-soaked dinner party with the chatty and risque Samantha and the mousy Caroline; the plummy Lord and Lady Crouchurst, in a spot of bother needing the help of Francis, a senior partner, to assist with the family's cash flow. Alan comes home from work to find Mr. Shakespeare doing a photo shoot of one of April's cats and a wealthy stranger, Miss Hunt, waiting to purchase one. His instincts for sycophantic palaver kick in.
Beverly Moss invites her new neighbours, Angela and Tony, over for drinks. She has also asked her divorced neighbour Susan, whose fifteen-year-old daughter Abigail is holding a party back in their house. Beverly's husband Laurence comes home late from work, just before the guests arrive. The gathering starts off in a stiff, insensitive, British-middle-class way as the virtual strangers tentatively gather, until Beverly and Laurence start sniping at each other. As Beverly serves more drinks and the alcohol takes effect, Beverly flirts more and more overtly with Tony, as Laurence sits impotently by.
Trevor is an extremely shy undertaker's assistant. He always tags along with his good friend Ronnie, when he goes to the pub with his girlfriend Sandra. Sandra introduces Trevor to her more forward friend Linda. Linda has a difficult time getting Trevor to go out with her, but she finally gets him to go to a disco; he won't dance, so Linda dances with Ronnie.
Mr Purvis wants comprehensive coverage for his car, but he's at the mercy of the Insurance Salesman - who seems reluctant to let him have it.
During an evening spent at his house with his sister, a girl realizes that she doesn't really have much in common with her boyfriend.
Transmitted as part of BBC Schools series Scene, 8 March 1973. Actor improvisations around the theme of gambling devised by Mike Leigh.
Moments from the uncompromisingly bleak existence of a secretary, her intellectually disabled sister, aloof and uneasy teacher boyfriend, bizarre neighbor and irritating workmate.
