Woman 2019

The story of Anna Campbell, who went to the front line to fight with Kurdish YPJ.

In 2017, 25-year-old Anna Campbell from Lewes in East Sussex travelled in secret to northern Syria. She was heading for Rojava, the Kurdish territory in the north of the country. In the midst of the civil war in Syria, a fledgling feminist democracy had been established but almost immediately came under threat from the so-called Islamic State. Just eight months after arriving and with no military background, Anna went to the front line to fight with Kurdish YPJ. A month later she was killed by a Turkish air strike.

Funk Queen Betty Davis changed the landscape for female artists in America. She 'was the first', as former husband Miles Davis said. 'Madonna before Madonna, Prince before Prince'. An aspiring songwriter from a small steel town, Betty arrived on the 70s scene to break boundaries for women with her daring personality, iconic fashion and outrageous funk music. She befriended Jimi Hendrix and Sly Stone, wrote songs for the Chambers Brothers and the Commodores, and married Miles – startlingly turning him from jazz to funk on the album she named 'Bitches Brew'. She then, despite being banned and boycotted, went on to become the first black woman to perform, write and manage herself.

Fake news is never out of today's headlines. But in his latest documentary taking the long view of a hot-button issue, Ian Hislop discovers fake news raking in cash or wreaking havoc long before our own confused, uncertain times. Ian mines history to identify what motivates fake news - from profit, power and politics to prejudice, paranoia and propaganda – as well as to try to figure out what to do about it. In America and back home, Ian meets, amongst others, someone whose fake news stories have reached millions and a victim of fakery alleged to be a mastermind of the spurious paedophile ring ‘Pizzagate’ conspiracy.

Joan Armatrading is one the most influential singer-songwriters in Britain. A national icon, she is known for her singular vision, both as a writer and as a performer. She has performed around the world to sell-out stadiums, releasing records and touring almost constantly from the early 70s to the present day.

Harlem-born artist, author and activist Faith Ringgold painted some of the most truthful and empowering representations of African Americans during the civil rights and women’s movements of the 1960s and 1970s. At the time, the art establishment dismissed her seminal American People series as political art by a woman, and a black woman at that. Undeterred, Ringgold continued to tell her story using numerous art forms, including traditional quilts which have their roots in the slave culture of the South. Ringgold reinterpreted their function to tell politically charged stories, something she has also done with her illustrated children’s books.

The inspirational story of two sisters who face their own mortality. Sixty-year-old Shirley sets out on an epic journey to row 3,000 miles unsupported across the Atlantic Ocean while her sister, Evelyn, battles a rare incurable cancer back home in Northern Ireland. If Shirley succeeds she'll be the oldest woman – and first Irish woman – to row solo across an ocean.
In this story of perseverance and the power of the human spirit, Shirley and Evelyn must confront extreme mental and physical challenges in the name of survival.