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The History Hour
Space travel and Mary Poppins
The History Hour
Aug 30, 2024

Max Pearson presents a collection of the week's Witness History episodes. Our guest is European Space Agency astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti, who completed the longest uninterrupted space flight of any European.

First, we go to Australia in the 1990s when amateur radio enthusiast Maggie Iaquinto befriended Soviet cosmonauts on the Mir space station. She updated them on global news as the USSR crumbled back on Earth.

Then, the inspiring story of Waris Dirie, who walked barefoot across the Somalian desert to escape child marriage and became an international supermodel.

We hear a harrowing account of Guatemala's civil war that ended in 1996.

Then, why the author of Mary Poppins, PL Travers, hated the Disney film.

Finally, the Canadian town that welcomed aliens in 1967.

Contributors: Samantha Cristoforetti - European Space Agency astronaut. Ben Iaquinto - son of Maggie Iaquinto who befriended Soviet cosmonauts. Waris Dirie - model from Somalia. Jeremias Tecu - survivor of Guatemala's civil war. Brian Sibley and Kitty Travers - friend and daughter of PL Travers. Paul Boisvert - worked on Canada's alien landing pad.

(Photo: Mir Space Station in 1995. Credit: Space Frontiers/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

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Max Pearson presents a collection of the week's Witness History interviews from the BBC World Service. Our guest is media, culture and creative industries lecturer Sarah Jilani. We start in 1954 with the Japanese film Seven Samurai which is widely considered to be one of world cinema's most influential films. Then, we hear about the 2006 Hindi film Rang de Basanti which broke box-office records and inspired thousands of young Indians to march for justice. We delve into the BBC Archives to hear from director Leni Riefenstahl about one of the most controversial propaganda movies ever made, Triumph of the Will, which was filmed at the Nazis’ Nuremberg rally in 1934. Next, we hear about the challenges of making the Hollywood 1942 classic, Casablanca, from the late son and nephew of the screenwriters. Finally, the story of the Spanish language fantasy, Pan's Labyrinth, which took the world by storm in 2006. Contributors: Hisao Kurosawa - movie producer, head of the Kurosawa Production Company and son of Seven Samurai director Akira Kurosawa. Sarah Jilani - a Lecturer in the Department of Media, Culture and Creative Industries, City St George's, University of London. Kamlesh Pandey - screenwriter. Leni Riefenstahl - film maker (from BBC Archive). Leslie Epstein - the late son and nephew of screenwriters Julius and Philip Epstein respectively. Ivana Baquero - actress. (Photo: Ingrid Bergman with Humphrey Bogart in a still from Casablanca. Credit: Universal History Archive/Getty Images)


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Space travel and Mary Poppins

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