John Cale on screen

Dal: Yma/Nawr (Still: Here/Now)

Director: Marc Evans (2003)

Color. 72 minutes.

This film produced for S4C by TV company Fiction Factory, takes viewers on a 2,000-year odyssey through Europe's oldest surviving bardic tradition. It takes in everything from Aneirin's sixth century war reportage to today's modern poetry slams, along with subtle clues to the secrets of its survival.

Cale plays piano and sings the traditional Welsh folks song Ar Lan y Môr (Beside the Sea).

The film features some of Wales' greatest performing talents. Sian Phillips, Ioan Gruffudd, Matthew Rhys and Rhys Ifans are among those reading poems while singer-songwriters Cerys Matthews and John Cale perform their own arrangements of two Welsh melodies. The film has a stirring musical score composed by Catatonia's Owen Powell and Bedwyr Humphries.

The director, Marc Evans, also directed House of America, scored by Cale in 1997, and Beautiful Mistake in 2000.

(Thanks: Peter Elliott)