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A bout de souffle, Sally Mann, Leonora Carrington, Permissive Society

Presented by Matthew Sweet. With a reissue of Jean Luc Godard's film Breathless, the photography of Sally Mann, surrealist Leonora Carrington and post war 'permissive society'.

It's the 50th anniversary of Jean-Luc Godard's 'A Bout de Souffle' - 'Breathless' - one of the first films of the French New Wave. With its jump cut style of editing, naturalistic dialogue with mistakes left in and its jazz soundtrack, 'Breathless' heralded a new kind of cinema. But, as the film is rereleased on its 50th birthday, how do we see it today?

Described by Time Magazine in 2001 as 'America's best photographer' Sally Mann's work has often caused controversy. Her series of photographs of her children pictured naked even led to accusations of child pornography. Anne Karpf joins Matthew to review a new exhibition of Mann's work which includes the photographs of her children, landscapes of her native Virginia and a new series of portraits of dead bodies.

A look at one of the last surviving surrealist artists from pre-war Paris. A contemporary of Picasso, Dali, Duchamp and Miro, Leonora Carrington has never been well known in this country, but a new exhibition in Chichester brings her work together with two of her fellow female surrealists. Richard Cork talks to Night Waves about the 'Surreal Friends'.

And a new book 'Capital Affairs' explores the connections between sex and social power in the 1950s, and suggests that the beginnings of the permissive society began, not in the 1960s, but in the culture and austerity of post-war London; its author, Frank Mort, and writer and director Neil Bartlett join Matthew Sweet to discuss London's sexual geography and influence on Britain.

45 minutes

Broadcast

  • Thu 17 Jun 2010 21:15

Free Thinking

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