³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ

Standing on the southern flank of Craig y Llyn, trying to picture what Treherbert and the valley stretching away from me must have looked like in the late 1940s, I realised that our third film had to explain, among many other things, the umbilical connections between art produced in those days in London and art produced in communities like Rhondda, in Wales.

In our third film, we wanted to continue to illustrate the pivotal role of Ceri Richards from Swansea, who, by the end of World War Two, was a colossus on the British art scene. Our film crew arranged to meet at the house in London belonging to Richards' daughter, Rhiannon, and her husband, Mel Gooding.

Bursting with beautiful art, much of it painted by Rhiannon's father, their house stands on an elegant yet busy thoroughfare through London and is the very antithesis of another thoroughfare that runs north-south, 170 miles due west of London: the railway that joins Treherbert to Cardiff, via Rhondda Fawr and Pontypridd.

Hard to imagine two more different worlds. But, 60 years ago, there was a flow of healthy creative blood between those two thoroughfares. Ceri Richards, Britain's leading surrealist, based in London, was an inspiration to a new generation of young Rhondda artists who used that railway as a moving seminar room.

Each morning in the late 1940s, Charles Burton, Ernie Zobole, Robert Thomas and other young lions caught a train from the Rhondda to attend Cardiff School of Art. When we interviewed Charles Burton he made it clear that, when they were arguing on that train about the relative merits of Ceri Richards and Picasso, the sliding door to their compartment was firmly shut to outsiders.

We decided this needed re-enacting and hired four young drama students to play the parts of the Rhondda artists. They performed beautifully in an ancient carriage hauled by a steam train on the Gwili Railway near Carmarthen. One of them was told by Steve Freer, our director: "When Kim finishes his piece to camera, standing there in the entrance to your carriage, I want you to slide the door, fast and hard, excluding him from your discussions, exactly as the Rhondda Group would have done to some outsider who might have tried to enter their private world."

Concentrating on the task of portraying a brittle young artist of the 1940s, the drama student put down his pencil and waited, tense with volcanic creativity, until I said my bit. Suddenly, with all his might, he slammed the door shut, missing my nose by a fraction. Whether or not the camera picked up the shock on my face at this screen violence, I don't know, and I didn't glance down to see if the drama student was pleased with his performance.

Instead, remembering Steve's instructions, I got a grip and walked out of camera shot, hearing Steve shout "Cut" as directors do when they get anywhere near actors. Only then, as the steam train puffed down the Gwili Valley, did I tentatively check with my index finger that my ample nose was still intact. It was.

Episode three of Framing Wales can be seen on Thursday 10 March at 7.30pm on ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Two Wales, or afterwards on ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ iPlayer.