An Arena documentary on musician Bob Dylan directed by Martin Scorsese is among BBC Two's forthcoming highlights.
No Direction Home - Bob Dylan features new interviews with the reclusive musician and unseen footage from his early life and peak creative period.
Scorsese is a fan of Dylan's music and made the show with US broadcaster PBS. It will air simultaneously in the UK and US.
BBC Two controller Roly Keating called it "a remarkable coup"
The documentary marks Arena's 30 years on BBC Two
Scorsese's second-hand portrait of Bob Dylan By Hugh Davies (Filed: 22/07/2005)
Martin Scorsese's long-awaited documentary on Bob Dylan is to be screened by BBC2 in two parts in September, with the singer apparently as enigmatic as ever, judging by a segment shown in London.
"You're constantly in a state of becoming," he says, mumbling to a camera operated by his manager, Jeff Rosen.
Dylan, who has given one television interview in 20 years, for his memoir Chronicles Vol 1, was initially his usual self, spending 10 hours talking with Rosen. The tapes were handed to Scorsese for editing. Scorsese, who filmed The Last Waltz in 1976, with Dylan singing Baby Let Me Follow You Down with The Band, said: ''I've had no contact with Dylan."
Any questions he had, he asked "through Jeff". It was "better", the director said, to "just deal with the material".
Roly Keating, the BBC2 controller, said that the 210-minute film promised an "awesome and unique" picture of the singer, covering Dylan's arrival in New York in January 1961 to July 1966, when he became a recluse after a motorcycle crash near his then home in Woodstock, New York.
Much of the film is about England, with previously unseen out-takes from D A Pennebaker's Don't Look Back and Eat The Document, shot on Dylan's 1965 and 1966 tours.
A highlight is the moment when a fan, Keith Butler, stood up in Manchester's Free Trade Hall in 1966, to shout "Judas!"
His cry, with Dylan's contemptuous response - "You're a liar" - are seen as a watershed moment in Dylan's transition to electric rock, following derision heaped on him at the Newport folk festival when he appeared with the Paul Butterfield Blues Band.
Anthony Wall, editor of Arena, which is showing the film, said that Dylan talks about his recording of Like a Rolling Stone, the six-minute single driven by a circular organ riff, which broke the barrier of the three-minute pop record.
He said: ''If anything, it's an emotional journey. Dylan talks about Joan Baez [his lover during his first UK tour] but doesn't answer questions in the way some artists do."
The film, No Direction Home, also has a promotional reel of what may be the earliest film of Dylan, taken in 1962. It unearths performances from the 1963 and 1964 Newport folk festivals, as well as some of Dylan's home movies.
There are interviews from Dylan's one-time girlfriend Suzy Rotolo, Baez, Dave Van Ronk, Pete Seeger, Al Cooper and Mitch Miller, along with "beat" poet Allan Ginsberg.
The BBC is also making a show about Dylan's first television appearance in Britain when he was paid 500 guineas to star with David Warner in The Madhouse on Castle Street.
BBC2's autumn season also includes Rome, an 11-part drama with Ciaran Hands as Caesar; Sensitive Skin, a dark comedy about London with Joanna Lumley and Denis Lawson; and Magnificent 7 with Helena Bonham-Carter as the mother of autistic children.
Scorsese film shows Dylan's 1966 'Judas' concert
22.07.05 1.00pm
By Ciar Byrne
Bob Dylan has broken decades of silence to talk candidly about the most important years of his career in a feature-length film directed by Martin Scorsese.
The legendary moment when Dylan was heckled with a cry of "Judas" at a 1966 concert will be shown for the first time in the film.
No Direction Home tells the story of Dylan in his key creative years from 1961 to 1966 and shows the famously private singer-songwriter talking about his childhood, relationships and music.
The film also features previously unseen footage of Dylan's live performances, as well as interviews with fellow artists whose lives were closely intertwined with his own, including Allen Ginsberg and Joan Baez, with whom he was romantically involved.
In a broadcasting first, the three-and-a-half-hour film will be shown consecutively over two days on the BBC in the UK and on the American public service broadcasting network, PBS.
Scorsese, who describes himself as a "great fan", did not meet Dylan during the making of the film, preferring to keep a distance from his subject, who gave him complete control over the final cut.
Dylan's manager Jeff Rosen conducted the interview, which lasted 10 hours over a week in 2000, although it has taken the notoriously perfectionist Scorsese until now to complete the film. It is not the first time Scorsese has filmed Dylan.
In 1978, the director of Goodfellas and The Aviator made The Last Waltz, a film about the farewell concert of The Band, which featured Dylan.
Scorsese said: "I had been a great fan for many years when I had the privilege to film Bob Dylan for The Last Waltz. I've admired and enjoyed his many musical transformations. For me, there is no other musical artist who weaves his influences so densely to create something so personal and unique."
A major theme of the film is the outrage expressed by fans of his acoustic folk music when he introduced an electric rock sound to his concerts.
The "Judas" moment was at a concert on 17 May, 1966 at Manchester's Free Trade Hall, when after playing an acoustic folk set in the first half, Dylan introduced his band and turned electric.
Scorsese was granted access to rare film, tape and stills from the Bob Dylan archive, including Murray Lerner's film Festival documenting Dylan's performances at the Newport Folk Festivals from 1963 to 1965 and D A Pennebaker's 1967 documentary Don't Look Back, based on the singer's tour of Britain.
The documentary will be shown on BBC2 in the UK as part of the Arena strand, which is celebrating its 30th anniversary this year.
Anthony Wall, the Arena series editor, said the film was not just a history of Dylan, but a chronicle of the 1960s.
"Martin Scorsese said he wanted it to be as much a story of the times as the story of Dylan," Mr Wall said.
"To see the moment when 'Judas' is actually screamed at him is quite disconcerting."
At the time, Dylan responded to the "Judas" cry with a blistering performance of "Like A Rolling Stone". Since then, several people have claimed responsibility for the notorious shout.
Mr Wall added: "Every night, all over the country, he'd do the acoustic half of the set and everybody would say 'genius' and then bring on the group who became The Band, and they were very, very loud.
"They were like the first modern rock band. Fifty per cent of the audience every night went along and jeered and booed.
"Nineteen-sixty-one till 1966 was a very turbulent time. Scorsese seems to take this going into electric as a metaphor for the way the decade changes."
Last year, Dylan, now 65, published his memoirs, Chronicles Vol.1, tracing the early years of the man who started life as Robert Zimmerman.
- INDEPENDENT
(He's playing Dublin in The Point later this year!! I might go, I saw him in Kilkenny afew years ago!)
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danjersey
Posted - 07/22/2005 : 20:23:16 "You're constantly in a state of becoming," he says, mumbling to a camera operated by his manager, Jeff Rosen.
