The Essay

Blade Runner's future is now 40 years old. 5 writers explore the impact and legacy Ridley Scott's 1982 classic where replicants escape to a retrofitted Earth only to meet their end at the hands of the washed out, titular Blade Runner played by, Harrison Ford. Adapted from Philip K. Dick's equally classic 1968 novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep.Both film and book are meditations on what it is to be human but we have been looking through the eyes of the film ever since it plunged us into its acid rain, neon coated, West Coast nightmare of flaming night skies, commercial ziggurats, flying cars and fake animals. Now its future is our present. We live in a world of mass species die off, environmental crisis, rapidly developing A.I., all powerful corporations & extreme divides between rich and poor.Film and book have bled into our culture in many different ways. Frances Morgan, writer and researcher into electronic music at the Royal College of Art, pierces the sound barrier of a film that defined the future not only in the way it looked but in the ways we heard tomorrow through Vangelis' extraordinary fusion of music, sound & image."the first thing I think of is the film’s sonic environment. The main character, the Blade Runner Rick Deckard, moves through the city, from its murky streets up to its corporate penthouses, against a constant backdrop of hissing rain, distant explosions, synthesized voices from billboard-sized screens, bleeping machines, hybrid pop music, multilingual chatter and the buzz of neon. Music ebbs and flows around him: deep drones swelling into gauzy synthetic strings. His apartment pulses with a low hum. Blade Runner is suffused, saturated with sound."Producer: Mark Burman

Blade Runner's future is now 40 year's old. Ridley Scott's 1982 classic SF vision of replicants escaping to a retrofitted Earth and meeting their end at the hands of the washed out, titular Blade Runner, Harrison Ford as Rick Deckard, is adapted from Philip K Dick's equally classic 1968 novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep.Both film and book are meditations on what it is to be human but we have been looking through the eyes of the film ever since it plunged us into its acid rain, neon-coated West Coast nightmare of flaming night skies, commercial ziggurats, flying cars and fake animals. Now its future is our present. We live in a world of mass species die-off, environmental crisis, rapidly developing AI, all-powerful corporations and extreme divides between rich and poor. Just that neon umbrellas never caught on and flying cars are still a luxury.Film and book have bled into our culture in many different ways and in this series of The Essay 5 writers explore what it is to be human or a machine, the sonic reaches of the film, the contradictions of sex robots, the cinematic legacy. And we begin with Deyan Sudjic, emeritus director of the Design Museum, considering the filmic city of Blade Runner's Los Angeles and its bleed-out beyond the screen into architecture and design."The film offers a deeply ambiguous spectacle. Blade Runner is a vision of a world in which mankind has blotted out the sun and nature has gone extinct. We know that we are meant to be horrified. And yet at the same time it’s thrilling to look at, like taking in the view at midnight from a bar on the 60th floor of a Shanghai skyscraper, nursing a vodka martini in an iced glass."Producer: Mark Burman

Camilla Smith looks at the art of the Weimar Republic.

In the first of five personal takes on the Weimar Republic, historian Jochen Hung presents his view of the Weimar Republic from Berlin.

The annual Arts Over Borders festival reaches into rural and urban communities on both sides of the Irish border. Curated with a strong sense of place and extending across four counties – from Fermanagh to Donegal, Tyrone to Derry/Londonderry- the border itself looms large in the festival.Recorded in front of live audiences at the 2019 Arts Over Borders festival in Enniskillen and Derry/Londonderry, five writers explore the theme of boundaries. At the Royal Grammar School, Enniskillen, the author Philip Hoare transcends the elements and talks about being shaped and reshaped by the sea. Producers: Ophelia Byrne & Cathy Moorehead

The annual Arts Over Borders festival reaches into rural and urban communities on both sides of the Irish border. Curated with a strong sense of place and extending across four counties – from Fermanagh to Donegal, Tyrone to Derry/Londonderry- the border itself looms large in the festival.Recorded in front of live audiences at the 2019 Arts Over Borders festival in Enniskillen and Derry/Londonderry, five writers explore the theme of boundaries. At Derry's Guildhall, the writer and journalist Ed Vulliamy talks about the musicians transgressing the perceived barriers between youth and age, from John Cale and Bob Dylan, to Leonard Cohen and Joan Baez.Producers: Ophelia Byrne & Cathy Moorehead

The annual Arts Over Borders festival reaches into rural and urban communities on both sides of the Irish border. Curated with a strong sense of place and extending across four counties – from Fermanagh to Donegal, Tyrone to Derry/Londonderry- the border itself looms large in the festival.Recorded in front of live audiences at the 2019 Arts Over Borders festival in Enniskillen and Derry/Londonderry, five writers explore the theme of boundaries. At the Royal Grammar School, Enniskillen, the writer Wendy Erskine takes us through doorways as portals into other worlds in art, literature and life.Producers: Ophelia Byrne & Cathy Moorehead

The annual Arts Over Borders festival reaches into rural and urban communities on both sides of the Irish border. Curated with a strong sense of place and extending across four counties – from Fermanagh to Donegal, Tyrone to Derry/Londonderry- the border itself looms large in the festival.Recorded in front of live audiences at the 2019 Arts Over Borders festival in Enniskillen and Derry/Londonderry, five writers explore the theme of boundaries. At the Guildhall in Derry/Londonderry, poet Stephen Sexton is prompted by a description of a traditional Tory Island wedding, to talk about the margins between language and image.Producers: Ophelia Byrne & Cathy Moorehead

The annual Arts Over Borders festival reaches into rural and urban communities on both sides of the Irish border. Curated with a strong sense of place and extending across four counties – from Fermanagh to Donegal, Tyrone to Derry/Londonderry- the border itself looms large in the festival.In this series of The Essay, recorded in front of live audiences at the 2019 Arts Over Borders festival in Enniskillen and Derry/Londonderry, five writers explore the theme of boundaries. At the Royal Grammar School, Enniskillen, Irish writer and broadcaster Sinéad Gleeson talks about the ways in which pain, inequality and borders can separate us.Producers: Ophelia Byrne & Cathy Moorehead

There’s a shadow creeping across the forest in the works of JRR Tolkien. Nature may be incorruptible but the creatures of the forest cannot withstand the relentless march of evil. Slowly but surely the songbirds are replaced by giant spiders, black squirrels and rampaging goblins. Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough is joined by Mark Atherton from Oxford University for a walk through Tolkien’s forest, uncovering the influence of Anglo-Saxon legends and Middle English poems in the creation of Middle Earth.Producer: Alasdair Cross