Marlene Dumas

Seventeen-year-olds Miku and Elias find themselves, and each other, during a summer in the Finnish countryside.

A journalist meets “Man of Today” who, while a responsible citizen, is disengaged from greater society. He believes once he’s dead nothing more matters. As an experiment to see if she can turn his pessimistic view around, the journalist sends him on a journey of enlightenment to prove that the future does matter. Travelling the globe, he finds himself in surprising encounters with great minds in the arts and sciences. Starting with an unexpected poetry reading and conversation with experimental poet Christian Bök, Man of Today engages with architect Shigeru Ban, activist Francis Dupuis-Déri, philosopher Alain de Botton, artist Marlene Dumas, novelist Rivka Galchen, leading scientists and a ghost. Will the journalist succeed in turning a cynic into an optimist? Will it matter? What can one person do?

A film about the artist Marlene Dumas: - There's no right way to portray or to understand someone. It's just an acknowledgment , not a denial of reality. Here are my paintings.

William Kentridge and Marlene Dumas – two of the most celebrated names in international contemporary art – come face to face in a series of frank, witty and intense discussions about their work and practice. The film follows them from the gentle ambience of a dinner conversation, to their studios – where we are given insight into the way that each artist works – to some of their finished works and installations. What emerges is how very differently these two highly successful South African artists approach image making. Dumas’ method is deeply intuitive – she often works on the floor as though embracing her paintings, pouring and dabbing paint to produce her remarkable portraits. Kentridge is intensely systematic, alternating gestural mark making with the repetitive action of drawing-filming-erasing for his animated films.

The South Bank Show is a television arts magazine show produced by ITV between 1978 and 2010. A new series began on Sky Arts from 27 May 2012. Presented by Melvyn Bragg, the show aims to bring both high art and popular culture to a mass audience.