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The dancer Moira Shearer starred in the 1948 film written, directed, and produced by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger which reworks a Hans Christian Andersen story, mixed with elements of ballet history and the founding of the Ballet Russes by Diaghilev. The film, about the tangled relationships between a dancer, composer and ballet impresario, had a cast involving many professional dancers, and gained five Academy Award nominations including best score for Brian Easdale. As the BFI prepares a UK-wide season of Powell and Pressburger films running from 16th October to 31st December (including a re-release of The Red Shoes), Matthew Sweet is joined by film critics Lillian Crawford, Pamela Hutchinson, dance reviewer Sarah Crompton and New Generation Thinker and film lecturer Lisa Mullen.Producer: Torquil MacLeodYou can find Matthew Sweet presenting Radio 3's regular strand devoted to film and TV music Sound of Cinema on Saturday afternoons at 3pm and available on BBC Sounds and a whole host of Free Thinking episodes devoted to classics of cinema are in a collection on the programme website labelled Landmarks including: Jean Paul Belmondo and the French New Wave, Marlene Dietrich, Dirk Bogarde and the Servant, Bette Davis, Sidney Poitier, Asta Nielsen.

New narrative was a way of mixing philosophical and literary theory with writing about the body and pop culture. It was promoted by a group of writers in 1970s San Francisco. One of the chapters in New Generation Thinker Diarmuid Hester's new book Nothing Ever Just Disappears explores their work. He joins Dodie Bellamy in a programme exploring different aspects of the gay imagination and the re-inventing of tradition presented by Naomi Paxton. Alongside them is Lauren Elkin, author of a study of unruly bodies in feminist art called Art Monsters which explores artists including Carolee Schneemann, and the influence of writers like Kathy Acker. And James Corley has adapted a play, opening at Wilton's in London, which takes an influential essay by Merle Miller as its starting point.Producer: Luke MulhallYou can find a collection called Identity Discussion on the Free Thinking programme website which includes episodes about including Rocky Horror and camp, the V&A exhibition Diva, punk, tattoos, and perfecting the body. Based on the essay On Being Different by Merle Miller, James Corley's What It Means is at Wilton's Music Hall in London 4th - 28th October 2023 Dodie Bellamy's first novel, The Letters of Mina Harker, took a character from Bram Stoker's Dracula. She has also published poetry, essays and memoirs. Nothing Ever Just Disappears Seven Hidden Histories by Diarmuid Hester is out now. He is a New Generation Thinker on the scheme run by Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Council to put academic research on the radio and you can find him talking about Derek Jarman's Garden in a previous Free Thinking episode https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000jgm5 exploring Stories of Love including Rubyfruit Jungle by Rita Mae Brown https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001hxhk and hosting an Arts and Ideas podcast episode about Raiding Gay’s the Word & Magnus Hirschfeld https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0ff53xvCheck out Forever Blue - Radio 3's broadcast on Sunday and then on BBC Sounds of a programme inspired by Derek Jarman's Blue, the film released 30 years ago which was also broadcast on Radio 3.

Six historians have been shortlisted for the 2023 history writing prize which has been awarded for over fifty years. Rana Mitter has been talking to the authors about the books in contention: African and Caribbean People in Britain: A History by Hakim Adi The World the Plague Made: The Black Death and the Rise of Europe by James Belich The Perils of Interpreting: The Extraordinary Lives of Two Translators between Qing China and the British Empire by Henrietta Harrison Vagabonds: Life on the Streets of Nineteenth-Century London by Oskar Jensen Resistance: The Underground War in Europe, 1939-1945 by Halik Kochanski Portable Magic: A History of Books and their Readers by Emma SmithThe winner is announced on November 13th 2023. You can find interviews with past nominees for the Wolfson prize, plus winners of other non fiction prizes like the Cundill and the British Academy Book Prize in previous editions of Free Thinking all available on BBC Sounds and as the Arts & Ideas podcast.Producer: Ruth Watts