Arena takes you on a guided tour of the smallest museum in the world - its 'curator', Swiss artist Herbert Distel, has transformed a small chest-of-drawers into a miniature museum. Originally used to store cotton reels, the Museum of Drawers now houses a collection to rival any major gallery - 500 original works contributed by many of the world's leading artists.

Recently awarded the accolade of a one-man show at the Royal Academy, Anthony Green is one of the most original and approachable of all figurative painters working in Britain today. He looks back on the growth of his family—and his painting—since his first encounter with the BBC's cameras nearly ten years ago.

A film on two of the greatest photographers of the 20th century: Jacques Henri Lartigue and Roman Vishniac. Lartigue began taking photographs at the age of seven in 1902, and his celebrated 'Diary of a Century' is a photographic record of his life from that time until the present day; meanwhile, Vishniac—a Russian Jew born in St Petersburg in 1897—is famous for his striking images of life in the Jewish ghettos, taken with a concealed camera just before the last world war.

Gavin Millar presents another edition in his regular series about the cinema today. He talks to Robert Altman about his new film 'A Wedding'; plus, Karel Reisz's 'Dog Soldiers' and other turn-of-the-year news.

Two years ago Marion Elliott, a 20-year-old from Brixton, gave up working in Woolworths and became punk singer Poly Styrene. Having created her own plastic image, she formed a band, X-Ray Spex, and set about reflecting life in the synthetic 70s with songs like 'The Day the World Turned Day-Glo' and 'Germ-Free Adolescents'. This film observes the differing worlds of Marion Elliott and Poly Styrene.

Aloe: a genus of plant indigenous to South Africa, noted for its ability to survive under the most adverse conditions. Athol Fugard is the author of such celebrated plays as 'The Blood Knot', 'The Island', and 'Sizwe Bansi is Dead'. He is known throughout the world for his opposition to Apartheid, and, more importantly, for his determination to express these views through the theatre and within South Africa. Last month his latest play, 'A Lesson from Aloes', opened in Johannesburg. It was both written and directed by Fugard, and Arena was there from the first day of rehearsals until the opening night. The film offers a unique insight into the evolution of a play and the remarkable tenacity of its author.

'Assault on Precinct 13' and 'Dark Star' were two of the 'sleepers' of the last two years - small-budget films from the USA that struck a chord right round the world. Their young writer/director John Carpenter's third feature film, 'Halloween', has opened in London. Gavin Millar interviews John Carpenter and star Donald Pleasence on location in Los Angeles.

Fibreglass carcasses, a flaming typewriter, and a troop of girl guides—each has been a key ingredient in a work of art by Leopoldo Maler. Deliberately provocative, surprise and spectacle are key elements in Maler's work.

How do the verbal images of poetry relate to the visual images of painting? Charles Tomlinson, one of England's finest poets, is also a painter. In this film he explores the landscapes—urban and natural—which have inspired his work.

The sell-out success of this year's Royal Shakespeare season at Stratford is the musical play 'Piaf'. Jane Lapotaire, television's Marie Curie, has won universal critical acclaim for her performance as the great French singer. Tonight Jane Lapotaire talks about imitating the inimitable.

A cast of 50 actors and musicians playing over 200 parts were commandeered by Ken Campbell for his marathon production of 'The Warp' at London's ICA. They were there to perform an epic cycle of ten plays running an uninterrupted 22 hours. Arena was there to witness the event—and to film the cast prior to their collapse.

John Barry (designer of 'Star Wars' and 'Superman') is now directing 'Saturn 3'. Ridley Scott ('The Duellists') is shooting 'The Alien'. Gavin Millar reports on these two new British SF films.

Lifers in prison cages, comedians in Hollywood, adolescents in the East End and female androids on the edge of the galaxy have all been subjects for Glasgow play-wright Tom McGrath in a career which started only in 1976. Arena profiles an original new talent. With extracts from 'The Hard Man' and 'Mr Laurel and Mr Hardy'.

More like 'Tom and Jerry' than Marcel Marceau, this highly unconventional group has attracted a cult following by combining traditional mime with their own fast-moving cartoon style. Unusual, original and very funny.

Isabelle Huppert is 23 - 'a stunning actress', says Claude Chabrol; Best Actress at Cannes in 1978 for 'Violette Noziere', the new Chabrol thriller. We talk to her in Paris.

Alberta Hunter is 83, a classic blues singer who performs the soundtrack of Alan Rudolph's 'Remember My Name'. We catch her singing at The Cookery, New York.

The television premiere of Geoff Dunbar's brilliant animation film. Based on Alfred Jarry's notorious surrealist hero, Pere Ubu, it chronicles the rise to power of a kind of punk Macbeth, a lewd and unscrupulous despot with the mentality of a petit bourgeois and with absolutely no redeeming qualities. Ubu Roi was originally written by Jarry as a schoolboy in 1888 and eventually presented to an outraged public in 1896. For his version of the story Dunbar has invented a brutal and graphic style to recreate the explosive impact of Jarry's original production.

"My Way" has become an anthem. It's been recorded over 140 times and for every artist who has put it on wax, countless others sing it in pubs, clubs and private homes. Arena investigates the appeal and staying power of a phenomenally popular song.

Twenty-three years ago Don Siegel made his famous horror pic 'Invasion of the Body Snatchers'. Now there is a new 'Invasion', even more chilling than the original; make-up effects by the man who dreamed up the aliens in 'Close Encounters'; special sound effects by the man who 'voiced' R2D2 in Star Wars. Gavin Millar talks to star Donald Sutherland and director Philip Kaufman.

In this, the first-ever exclusive Arts Documentary about a living legend, our cameras probe and etch the enigma which is Dame Edna. Meet her in the privacy of her fabulously appointed penthouse suite atop the Dorchester Hotel, London, W1. Witness the fabled finale of her current West End hit, A Night with Dame Edna. Visit her Melbourne home suburb, Moonee Ponds, now a national monument... and suffer with her the tears, terror and triumph as she claws her way to the top. Dame Edna talks fearlessly about her fame, her wealth and her humility, whilst wearing no less than ten unique couturier-simulated gowns. And much, much more.

At the height of the American depression in the summer of 1936, writer James Agee and photographer Walker Evans travelled south to Alabama. There they lived with a family of poor-white farmers recording their daily lives in intimate detail. What finally emerged was an extraordinary and personal account of deprivation and poverty. The book Let Us Now Praise Famous Men has become a classic. More than 40 years later Arena returned to Alabama, in the foot-steps of Agee and Evans, to trace the survivors of that original family.

Everybody knows about Kung Fu, Run Run Shaw and Bruce Lee. They probably know less about the young film-makers who are trying to get a few of Hong Kong's more pressing problems on to the screen: over-crowding, poverty, refugees, and worries about China. There are, too, the glamorous invaders from Hollywood who see Hong Kong as another exotic backdrop where two hearts might beat as one. Candice Bergen has been there starring in Oliver's Story, the sequel to Love Story. 'Where's the real Hong Kong gone?' she asks.

Rock band Sham 69 have a large and loyal following of working-class kids, who call themselves 'The Sham Army'. They have a reputation for causing trouble, and Sham concerts have often been disrupted and brought to an end by fighting. Jimmy Pursey, the lead singer, has struggled to prevent these outbreaks, but the violent and conflicting passions aroused at Sham concerts have placed him in an increasingly difficult position. Sham's latest album 'That's Life' portrays the pressures that face the kids who follow the band. Arena this week recreates scenes from that album and follows the story of one Sham concert which threatened to explode.

For David Oxtoby, Elvis is king. He's been painting rock'n'roll stars since the 50s, much to the bemusement of the art establishment. Most of the paintings in this film—of Presley, Haley, Gene Vincent, etc.—were stolen and subsequently burnt by Italian bandits, and so Arena presents a unique chance to view the work of this entertaining but ill-starred artist.

Last year the artist Mark Boyle attained the singular distinction of occupying the entire British pavilion at the Venice Biennale, astonishing visitors with a Sardinian mountainside, a ploughed field and a Liverpool pavement. Since pioneering light shows with Jimi Hendrix and the Soft Machine he has devoted his life to travelling the world, recreating with uncanny accuracy six-foot-square replicas of the Earth's surface.

Arena presents a film about the strange art of ventriloquism with Tattersall and his amazing life-size doll.

A film about the popular reggae band Steel Pulse, whose highly successful debut album 'Handsworth Revolution' launched them last summer on the road to fame. Although their roots are in Jamaica, Steel Pulse is very much an indigenous British band.

One in six people in Britain will spend some time in a mental hospital. For 50 years, painting or drawing have provided an important key to the problems of the mentally ill. This Arena film presents some of the extraordinary and moving pictures of the mind produced in Europe since the war.

John Hoyland is reckoned by many both here and abroad to be this country's finest abstract painter. A key figure for younger artists and critics, he has been both loved and hated to excess. As a major retrospective of his work opens in London, here is a film that stays close to the artist during six days when he faces hostile criticism, starts a new painting and explains why, in bleaker moments, painting can seem ' like flicking away in a corner with a feather duster '.