Arena 1978

Cinema: The Force is with Us? (1978)

Star Wars - the biggest and fastest money-maker in the history of the movies - has opened in Britain at last. What on earth - or in heaven - has caused the phenomenal success of this galactic romp-cum-morality tale? Gavin Millar talks to the producer Gary Kurtz, the designer John Barry and to Mark Hamill who plays the young hero Luke Skywalker.

Henry Moore Meets Leonardo (1978)

Henry Moore confronts the anatomical drawings of Leonardo Da Vinci & talks about them in relation to his own life-long study of the human body. Also George Melly takes a day trip which includes a show of Dada & Surrealism at Hayward Gallery.

Theatre (1978)

' But please, this is a farce! ' The story of The Cherry Orchard CHEKHOV: '... It hasn't turned out a drama but as a comedy, in places even a farce.' STANISLAVSKY: ' ... I wept like a woman, I tried to control myself but I could not. I hear you say, " but please, this is a farce! " No, for the ordinary person, this is a tragedy.' With the advent of two major new productions of The Cherry Orchard, at the National Theatre and Riverside Studios, Arena: Theatre addresses itself to the recurring debate about Chekhov the ' comic' dramatist.

Cinema: Joseph Conrad (1978)

A British film The Duellists starring Keith Carradine, Harvey Keitel and Albert Finney won the Special Jury Award at Cannes last year and it opened in London last week. It is a finely photographed period film set in the beautiful Dordogne but the most admirable thing about it may be that it is as faithful an adaptation of Conrad as any the screen has seen - and there have been many, from a 1926 silent version of Nostromo to Richard Brooks’s Lord Jim and Hitchcock's Sabotage.

Art and Design (1978)

This month features three current exhibitions: Carrington: the letters and paintings of a gifted and tragic artist. ‘She was alive at every point, and the variety of her feelings wore her out. All her life she remained a giver, not a receiver.’ (Michael Holroyd) Robert Motherwell: the work of one of the giants of contemporary art, with extracts from an Omnibus interview with the artist. Michael McKinnon: exploring the new landscape of space-age technology in stunning visual images. Plus our Commercial Break