Saturday Review - 28/11/2009

Tom Sutcliffe is joined by historian Kathryn Hughes, Rector of the Royal College of Art Professor Sir Christopher Frayling, and writer and comedian Danny Robins to discuss the cultural highlights of the week - featuring what makes people who they are. The National Theatre's Christmas show this year, Nation, is adapted from a Terry Pratchett book. It features a parallel world in 1860 where two teenagers are thrown together by a tsunami that has destroyed Mau's village and left Daphnie shipwrecked on his South Pacific island, thousands of miles from home. Mau finds his sense of self upended when the British Empire washes up on his beach. Seraphine is an award-winning French film with subtitles with an extraordinary performance by Yolande Moreau as a cleaning woman with a fierce creative compulsion. She paints in secret but when a German art collector comes to town he's impressed by her work and promotes it in Paris, a success she's not entirely equipped to handle. Screen Epiphanies by Geoffrey Macnab is all about filmmakers on the films that inspired them. Thirty five international filmmakers explain their reasons for pursuing a career in the movie industry and reveal the film moments that stayed with them long after they left the movie theatre.