Casa Verdi is a rambling mansion in the city of Milan, inhabited by an extradordinary and captivating group of people. Once it belonged to the composer Guiseppe Verdi; now it has become a home to retired musicians. Once-famous divas, composers, and singers from the opera chorus are bonded together by old memories and rivalries, their spirit and joy in their music quite undiminished by age. This film, by Swiss director Daniel Schmid, shared last year's documentary Grand Prix at Florence with Arena's 'Sunset People'.

The New Babylon tells the dramatic story of the revolutionary tragedy of the Paris Commune. Like many masterpieces, its first public showing, in 1929, provoked outrage and derision. Shostakovich's brilliant and innovative score baffled the audience, and the conductor was accused of being drunk. The film and its music were banned immediately, and the score itself disappeared for decades until it was rediscovered after the composer's death. For this showing, the score has been reconstructed from Shostakovich's original handwritten copy by Omri Hadari, who conducts the London Lyric Orchestra.

That most erotic and mysterious of dances, the tango, came to life in the suburbs and backstreets of Buenos Aires. This Arena Special traces its colourful and bizarre life story, through the work of its greatest poets, dancers and musicians. At the beginning of the century the tango was danced only in the harbour brothels, then, in sophisticated and fashionable nightclubs, and adopted by major poets and writers, it entered its golden age in the 30s and 40s. For the Argentines it's more than just a dance - the poet Discépolo calls it "a feeling of sadness which can even be danced to." Away from tourists' eyes, in their own cafes and dance halls, today's unknown 'stars' of tango tell their stories, among them the charismatic Juanita 'La Negra'. The strange and magical history of tango is told through the words of poets, rare archive film of its greatest stars of the past, and specially choreographed scenes by a modern master, Juan Carlos Copes.

From its origins in ninth-century China to its modern incarnation as a Christmas pantomime, Cinderella has endured as one of the best-loved fairytales. But what has made this fable of domestic abuse so popular for so long? Marina Warner, author of several studies on legendary heroines, reinterprets the myth through some of its forgotten versions, and shows how today's simpering weakling has at other times been seen as an innocent victim of incestuous longings, or even as a gutsy fighter who breaks her evil stepmother's neck. Writer Angela Carter, psychologist Bruno Bettelheim, and photographer Jo Spence offer their views; and Cinderella appears in the current stage production, in TV ads for soapflakes, tampons and table wines, and in a host of classic screen performances. Tonight Arena looks beyond Cinderella the feminine archetype to discover what really happened after the ball.

Behind the quiet, gentlemanly exterior of Norman Lewis lies the acute perception of one of Britain's foremost travel writers and investigative journalists. His fascinating accounts of the cultures of the world cover the Brazilian jungle, the tribes of Indo-China, the villages of Spain and his own eccentric upbringing in Enfield, where his parents ran a Spiritualist church. One of his finest books is 'Naples '44', describing his experiences as an intelligence officer with the forces that liberated Southern Italy. In tonight's film Lewis returns to this extraordinary region where the ancient Sibyl foretold the fates of emperors and kings, whose local saint can quell the lavas of Vesuvius, and where today 600 Mafiosi are on trial. Through Lewis's own idiosyncratic observations, Arena explores the life and work of a very dead-pan Englishman abroad.

The home of the White House, the Pentagon and the President is also the home of the most exciting soul scene of the 1980s. The raw power of the go-go beat has emerged within a stone's-throw of America's palaces of power. Washington DC is 70 per cent black and go-go is more than just a musical trend - it is the lifestyle of Washington's black youth. In tonight's Arena, eminent go-go saxophonist Carl 'Low Budget' Jones, of the band Redds and the Boys, takes a journey around Washington city, introducing its musicians and their place within the history of American soul music. Chuck Brown and the Soul Searchers, Trouble Funk, Experience Unlimited and The Class Band are the featured acts as Arena goes to the heart of Chocolate City.

Novelist, poet, essayist and the first woman to be elected to the Academie Francaise, Marguerite Yourcenar lives and writes on her island refuge off the coast of Maine. Her work ranges from a series of celebrated historical novels, including a classic study of the Emperor Hadrian, to translations of blues and gospel songs. Characteristically, Yourcenar is indifferent to public honour. The intellectual elite of the Academy, she says, "decided to take a woman. It happened that woman was me." In Arena this week, she talks about her life and work to writer and critic Peter Conrad.

The American film actress Louise Brooks, who died last summer, was one of the most celebrated beauties in the history of the cinema. Her performance as unrepentant pleasure-seeker Lulu in G.W. Pabst's 'Pandora's Box' made her a legend. Louise Brooks's own life had more than a touch of Lulu's reckless abandon about it. In tonight's Arena, she talks candidly about her greatest days in Paris and Berlin and of the harsh retribution that was exacted by Hollywood. With rare clips from her varied screen performances.

In 1950 the Grand Prix of the prestigious Venice Film Festival went quite unexpectedly to a Japanese film. It was called 'Rashomon', and the director was Akira Kurosawa. In the years since then he has become celebrated as a unique stylist and storyteller of humanity and compassion, producing a series of film classics like 'Seven Samurai', 'Living', 'Kagemusha', and his latest, 'Ran'. In a rare interview Kurosawa, a reclusive and controversial figure, talks about his early films, about the masterpieces of the 50s and 60s, and about the struggles of his later years to continue his work in the face of mounting indifference and hostility within Japan.

Critical acclaim for a group of recent art school graduates has put Scottish art, and Glasgow in particular, firmly on the international map. Two people at the forefront of this unexpected renaissance are Stephen Campbell and Adrian Wiszniewski. Within three years of leaving college, their pictures already hang in the Tate Gallery, the Museum of Modern Art and the Metropolitan Museum in New York, and are sought after by museums and collectors in Europe and North America. In this week's Arena, the former classmates meet again to take stock of their meteoric rise and to compare notes on the art scene in Britain and New York.

Don McCullin's powerful pictures of the horrors of war and deprivation have made him one of the world's most celebrated photographers. Now, after more than 20 years working exclusively with the stills camera, he has been commissioned by Arena to make his first film. In tonight's programme he turns his eye on life in Britain today, with portraits of Bradford, Harlow and East London. Through the industrial city, the dream of the new town and the capital past and present, McCullin reveals a Britain which is exotic, diverse and often disturbing.

Despite the dangers and deprivations of war, the people of Bluefields, Nicaragua, still find time to do the Lambeth Walk and dance Maypole. Bluefields, on Nicaragua's east coast, is named after a notorious 17th-century pirate and its stormy past has provided it with a culture which is an anomalous amalgam of Spanish, British, American, Amerindian and African. Arena takes you down 'The Secret River' to this curious corner of the Caribbean.

A portrait of the man who made reggae known and appreciated all over the western world, and who refused to abandon a message of personal and political liberation. Tonight's programme includes a wealth of his finest performances, from early sessions by the original Wailers to his last rehearsals in Kingston. Interviews with Marley himself and with those who knew him best, including his mother Cedella Booker, his wife Rita Marley, his original partners Peter Tosh and Bunny Wailer, Judy Mowat and Marcia Griffiths from his backing group the 1 Threes, his art director Neville Garrick, and Chris Blackwell, founder of Island Records.

Born in Trinidad in 1901, C.L.R. James came to England in the 1930s and was cricket correspondent for the Manchester Guardian. In this programme the author of the now classic book 'Beyond the Boundary' selects his definitive cricket team. From W.G. Grace to Gary Sobers, C.L.R.'s choice spans seven decades and, using rare archive film, reveals some of the greatest moments in cricketing history.

In an old church in Havana, the Urfe brothers play Danzones, the first popular Cuban music to emerge from the blend of African and European traditions at the turn of the century. The dance it inspired was considered shocking by colonial Cuban society.

According to reggae greats Bob Marley and Burning Spear, football and Rastafari are one and the same thing. In the last week of the World Cup, Rasta and the Ball takes you to the Marcus Garvey Youth Club, the beaches, and Kingston's back-street pitches where reggae music and football are played with equal dedication and enthusiasm in the same spirit of Rastafari. Bob Marley demonstrates his skills on the field and in the recording studio.

Cuban jazz is rarely heard over here. Tonight, Arena redresses the balance with a performance by virtuoso trumpeter Arturo Sandoval. Much admired by Dizzy Gillespie, he returns the compliment with 'Blues Homage'; he then takes to the piano for a dynamic duet with bass player Jorge Reyes; and, finally, is joined by brilliant new-wave singer Donato Poveda.

Speaking from Henry Moore’s own studio in Perry Green, John Read reaffirms his belief in the artist’s status as one of the greatest sculptors since the Renaissance. He traces Moore’s life and his own connections with him through extracts from the documentaries he has made and reminiscences of their many personal encounters.

Dalí is the great showman of Surrealism, the creator of the 'Mae West Lips Sofa' and the 'Lobster Telephone'. As a painter his style is unique, yet perhaps his greatest achievement is his own personality. Dalí is a self-pronounced genius. Today he lives as a recluse in the palace museum which he has built as a monument to his life, and holds court in the room which he never leaves. Arena traces his career through film, much of it from Dalí's own private archive, and combines the testimony of his closest associates, including Captain Peter Moore and Amanda Lear, and his Surrealist contemporaries Max Ernst, Luis Buñuel and Man Ray, with Dalí's own extravagant account of his life and adventures.

Federico García Lorca, perhaps the best-known and loved Spanish poet and dramatist of this century, was brutally executed at the age of 38 during the early days of the Spanish Civil War. Tonight's Arena, in collaboration with the acclaimed Irish writer and Lorca biographer Ian Gibson, evokes his life and unravels the exact circumstances of his death. Close friend of Salvador Dalí and Luis Buñuel, Lorca was a charismatic figure - musician, painter, actor, as well as a writer. The roots of his work lie deep in the rich culture, music and landscape of southern Spain. Through the recollections of friends and fellow poets, with singers and theatrical performances, in Spain, Cuba and the United States, this film evokes the passionate and potent spirit of Lorca's work and tragically short life.

When the Khmer Rouge invaded Phnom Penh, the Cambodian capital, they forced the entire population into the countryside where they were starved, beaten and worked to death on grandiose, impractical 'revolutionary' schemes. Among them was a young man called Someth May, a doctor's son. Ten members of his family died before he managed to escape to Thailand. There he contacted the distinguished journalist and poet, James Fenton, who arranged his release from a refugee camp and brought him to England. For two years, May struggled to write his story with Fenton's help, and over the last 18 months Arena filmed the two writers as they overcame the barriers of language, memory and intense emotion to create a shocking and vivid memoir of his horrific experiences.

In this week's Arena, Gerald Scarfe takes a long, hard look at himself. In his paintings and drawings he mercilessly pillories the powerful and the famous, and yet in public he presents an image of docile sociability. In this irreverent investigation of his own personality Scarfe attempts to reconcile his two sides. He traces his progress from an asthmatic childhood, through his early days in 'Punch' and 'Private Eye', to the 'Sunday Times' - his days of reportage in Vietnam and electioneering travels with American presidents. He talks to Richard Ingrams, Peter Cook, Harold Evans and Roger Waters, and explores how his work has developed through sculpture, animation, films such as 'The Wall', rock and roll with Pink Floyd, theatre, and opera work.

Fifty years ago, Basil Wright and Harry Watts' classic documentary 'Night Mail' celebrated the role of the railways as the nation's distributor of goods, mail, food, and other essentials. In 1986, Arena's 'Night Moves' celebrates the role of the trucking industry - the age of steam has become the day of the articulated lorry. Count every commodity on a supermarket shelf, virtually every object you can buy - a lorry put it there. With Timothy Spall as 'The Fool on the Road', and specially written music by Ian Dury, Arena goes trucking. 'Night Moves' creates a kaleidoscope of travel, incident, action and celebrities that will astonish everyone who thinks lorries just block the road.

Bishop of his own church, Kapo is also Jamaica's most famous artist. His paintings and sculpture explore the mysterious world of dreams, possession and healing in a rich cultural mix drawing equally upon the spirit world of Africa and the Christianity of Europe.