SKY Arts September Book-related Highlights

GILES COREN: MY FAILED NOVEL
Thursday 1 September, 9.15pm
Literature

 

Giles Coren is well known today for being a TV presenter, food critic and opinionated journalist. But 10 years ago, his first novel was about to be published and he believed he was on the cusp of literary greatness. Nothing could have proved further from the truth and now this entertaining investigation seeks to find out where it all went wrong. His debut novel Winkler received crushing reviews, did not sell many copies and was largely ignored. With the pain of failure now mostly behind him, Giles sets out discover why the book was universally criticised and why it was left on the shelf. In a twist of fate, this failure set him on the path to TV presenting, so we see him at ease interviewing successful authors such as Jeffery Archer, Hanif Kureshi and Rose Tremain and revisiting the process of writing and publishing his only novel for the cameras. He also meets a book group that has actually read Winkler and attends a creative writing class that is work shopping its first 5000 words. He was never going to win the Booker Prize, but was his novel really that bad?
 

F FOR FRANCO

Saturday 24 September, 8.30pm
Artist Biography

 

Actor, director, author, visual artist – all of these terms can be applied to James Franco, whose presence looms large over Hollywood. In 2013 he starred in two blockbuster films (Oz the Great and Powerful and This is the End), published his book A California Childhood, and exhibited an art installation, “Psycho Nacirema”, at Pace London. If you are not familiar with these last two projects, or his collaborative art installation, “REBEL”, you are probably not alone. Franco has always had a strong interest in art and writing, and with the success of his more commercial feature film work came a realisation now is the time for him to do work that fulfils him. He decided to direct projects, write and create art on his own terms, and explore his unique vision. Francisco J. Ricardo is an author, art theorist, and filmmaker who once taught Franco at the Rhode Island School of Design. It was here Ricardo began to explore Franco’s creative processes, and what inspires these less commercial, artistically free projects. This documentary explores an early portion of this large body of work, some based on projects he did in years past, others his artistic answer to critics and those who desire to use his name to grab their own piece of celebrity. Based on hours of personal interviews between Ricardo and Franco, and footage from his archives, F For Franco is a visually unconventional meditation on the art of James Franco that lies outside the realm of what his audience is used to seeing.

 

ED HARDY: TATTOO THE WORLD
Sunday 4 September, 7.15pm
Artist Biography

 

Ed Hardy: Tattoo The World is an artist’s journey, his unexpected rise to cult status and his phenomenal influence on pop culture. With one foot in the world of tattooing and the other planted in the fine arts, each informed the other.

 

IN LIGHT OF THE REVOLUTION

Friday 9 September, 8pm
World Art/Humanities

 

“We can’t play it cool for longer! When someone dies to express their opinion, you can’t just go back” says one of this documentary’s subjects, the songwriter Youssra el Hawari. She is one of the Egyptian artists, all women, involved in visual arts, photography, music and film. In personal accounts and through their work, this films shows how the revolution in 2011 has strengthened the women and how from then on, they have changed and developed. Today, their art is more important than anything for them.

 

I AM SUN MU

Saturday 10 September, 8.30pm
Visual Art/Artist Biography

 

Sun Mu, a former senior North Korean propaganda artist, managed to escape to the South. He now uses his talent to make fun of the Supreme Leader through satirical political pop art. When