Night Waves - Frederick Wiseman/Centurion/The Politics of Aid/South African Writers

Anne McElvoy talks to the veteran director Frederick Wiseman, whose string of observational films since the early 1960s have made him one of America's best-known documentary-makers. High-Schools, racetracks, council chambers, Central Park and housing estates - all have been the subject of Wiseman's legendary and unique style of film-making. His documentaries often have no voiceover, no score and no clear protagonists - but they are celebrated for their artistic treatment of real life. And despite the commercial pressures on film, Wiseman has been able to make 36 films in the last 40 years. Now Wiseman has turned his gaze to the life of a ballet company and Anne McElvoy talks to him about his new film - "La Danse" - about the work of Ballet de l'Opera National de Paris. We also review Centurion, the new film from Neil Marshall loosely based on the legend of the 9th legion - supposedly lost somewhere in Britain in years following the Roman Invasion. Writer and film critic Matt Thorne joins Anne to ask how this latest swords and sandals epic stands up. And Anne is also joined by the Dutch journalist Linda Polman and Tom Porteous, director of Human Rights Watch in the UK to talk about the politics of aid, and as this month's London Book Fair focusses on writers from South Africa, we ask how crime writers have dealt with the problems of writing about fictional crime in a part of the world where for some crime has become so commonplace.