imagine... - Season 13

Another chance to see a rare film made with writer Doris Lessing, five years before her recent death at the age of 94. Alan Yentob meets this acerbic, forthright yet warm woman, winner of the 2007 Nobel Prize for literature. Brought up in southern Africa, she took London by storm in 1950. She has believed in 'ban the bomb' and telepathy, been a Communist and a 'Free Woman', written realist novels and science fiction. She is perhaps most remembered for her raw and revealing Golden Notebook, which inspired and influenced a generation of women.

Alan Yentob investigates the extraordinary impact music can have on the human brain. He travels to meet Tony Cicoria, who was struck by lightning and suddenly developed an insatiable passion for the piano, and Matt Giordano, who can alleviate his severe Tourette's syndrome by drumming - both remarkable case studies from neurologist Dr Oliver Sacks's latest book, Musicophilia. Alan even has his own brain scanned - with surprising results.

Alan Yentob and Annie Leibovitz's sister Barbara present an intimate portrait of the American photographer who, now in her fifties, is still universally in demand from pop stars to political leaders, rabble-rousers to royalty.

Those who have not heard her name will certainly have seen her pictures - from a naked and pregnant Demi Moore to Bruce Springsteen's famous Born in the USA album cover, or a naked John Lennon next to a fully clothed Yoko Ono.

And in her personal life too, Leibovitz has veered from the customary path by having a lengthy relationship with the late Susan Sontag and giving birth at the age of 51.

The musicians of the Berlin Philharmonic set off on a concert tour of Asia and, with remarkable frankness, talk about the hopes and regrets that come from a life on the road.

The players and their conductor, Sir Simon Rattle, offer their reflections on friendship and competition, the pressure to perform, the loss of technique with getting older, and that overwhelming sensation that keeps them coming back for more.

Arts and culture programme. Alan Yentob explores the mysterious, offbeat, sexually-charged world of Japan's most popular and internationally acclaimed writer, Haruki Murakami. Murakami is incomparable; a literary novelist, he writes cool, witty, and often surreal bestsellers. The notoriously enigmatic and media shy author always shuns radio and television, but agreed to a rare and frank off-camera interview for this programme.

In this impressionistic film Alan Yentob travels in Japan through the strange, labyrinthine landscape of Murakami's fiction on a jazz-fuelled 'wild sheep chase' of a journey. In Tokyo and Kobe he delves into the social and political background of Murakami's work and encounters his fans, critics, translators ... and a talking cat.

Alan Yentob meets the renowned German film director, Werner Herzog. Legendary for his refusal to compromise in his search for 'the real truth,' Herzog has a reputation for pushing cast, crew and studios to the absolute limit.

With footage from the director's extensive back-catalogue, including Rescue Dawn, Grizzly Man, Even Dwarfs Started Small and Fitzcarraldo, Yentob gives an insight into one of modern cinema's most surprising and complex fimmakers.

Alan Yentob looks at the work of Anthony Minghella, the celebrated Oscar-winning director of The English Patient and The Talented Mr Ripley, who died suddenly in March. Minghella was a much-loved figure whose talents also embraced the worlds of opera, theatre and television. Those who worked with him and knew him best join the show to pay tribute. They include Jude Law, Nicole Kidman, Alan Rickman and Ralph Fiennes.