The Film programme is a British film review television programme, broadcast weekly on BBC One, presented by Claudia Winkleman and Danny Leigh. The title of the show changes each year to incorporate the year of broadcast, with the current series being Film 2012, but when referring to successive series, the BBC calls it "the Film programme". The show was previously presented by Barry Norman between 1972 and 1998, and by Jonathan Ross from 1999 to 2010, before receiving a format revamp with the introduction of Claudia Winkleman as host from 2010.

The show was first broadcast on 16 November 1971 but it was only aired in the South East area of the UK under the title Film '71. It was then aired in all areas of the UK in 1972. The show was first hosted by several presenters including Joan Bakewell, Frederic Raphael, Iain Johnstone and Barry Norman.

Barry Norman became permanent host of the series in 1972. For his first episode on Film 72, his first film review was of The Last Picture Show, while his first studio interviewees were Charlton Heston and James Stewart. For much of his time on the show, "with Barry Norman" was appended to the show's title.

Barry Leslie Norman, CBE (born 21 August 1933 in London) is a British film critic, writer and media personality. He presented BBC Television's Film 72 (and successive years) until 1998.

Norman, the son of film director Leslie Norman and the brother of script editor and director Valerie Norman, was educated at a state primary school and at the Highgate School, a boys' independent school in North London. He did not go to university, but instead began his journalistic career at the Kensington News, later spending a period in South Africa where he developed a hostility to the situation created there by the emergence of apartheid.

By the 1960s, Norman was a prominent journalist, and show business editor of the Daily Mail until 1971, when he was made redundant. Subsequently, he wrote a column each Wednesday for The Guardian, also contributing leader columns to the newspaper.

He was one of the collaborators with Wally Fawkes on the long running cartoon strip Flook. He has also contributed a column to the Radio Times for many years, and has written a number of novels.

Gary Lucas is an American guitarist, a Grammy-nominated songwriter, a soundtrack composer for film and television, and an international recording artist with over a twenty solo albums to date. He has been described as "one of the best and most original guitarists in America" (David Fricke, 16 Nov. 2006, Rolling Stone); a "legendary leftfield guitarist" (The Guardian, 24 Dec. 2005); "the thinking man's guitar hero" (The New Yorker, 8 Jan. 2007), "perhaps the greatest living electric guitar player" (Daniel Levitin) and one of "the most innovative and challenging guitarists playing today" (fRoots, March 2002). Lucas is also associated with vocalist Jeff Buckley, who performed for a year in Lucas' band, Gods and Monsters, early in his career.

Lucas tours the world solo, as well as with several different ensembles including his longtime band NYC-based group, Gods and Monsters, a psychedelic rock band based around Lucas's guitar playing and songwriting. Other regular members of the band include Ernie Brooks, Jason Candler, and Billy Ficca. Lucas also lectures on guitar and the music business in general. As of 2007, he has performed in more than 40 countries, including Russia (Moscow, St. Petersburg) and the Netherlands, India, China, Cuba, Latin America, and the Canary Islands.

Billy Taylor (July 24, 1921 – December 28, 2010) was an American jazz pianist, composer, broadcaster and educator. He was the Robert L. Jones Distinguished Professor of Music at East Carolina University in Greenville, and since 1994, he was the artistic director for jazz at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C.

Taylor was a Jazz activist. He sat on the Honorary Founders Board of The Jazz Foundation of America. In 1989, Billy Taylor, Ann Ruckert, Herb Storfer and Phoebe Jacobs started The Jazz Foundation to save the homes and the lives of America's elderly jazz and blues musicians, later including musicians that survived Hurricane Katrina.

Billy Taylor was also one of the foremost jazz educators. He lectured in colleges, served on panels and travelled worldwide as a jazz ambassador. Critic Leonard Feather once said, "It is almost indisputable that Dr. Billy Taylor is the world's foremost spokesman for jazz."

Taylor was born in Greenville, North Carolina but moved to Washington, D.C. when he was five. He grew up in a musical family and learned to play different instruments as a child, including guitar, drums and saxophone. But he was most successful at the piano and took classical piano lessons with Henry Grant, the same teacher that had educated Duke Ellington a generation earlier. He made his first professional appearance playing keyboard at the age of 13 and the compensation was one dollar. Taylor attended Dunbar High School, America's first high school for African American students. He went to Virginia State College and majored in sociology. Pianist Dr. Undine Smith Moore noticed young Taylor's talent in piano and he changed his major to music, graduating with a degree in music in 1942.