I was once shown around Anglia TV’s studios by the bloke who used to say, "And now, from Norwich - the quiz of the week!” by way of introduction to the immortal Sale of the Century. A tremendous thrill, as you can imagine.

Based in a collection of barns on a cliff top near Mevagissey on the south Cornish coast, Kneehigh theatre company has always looked defiantly away from London and out towards the sea and the wider world. This streak of independence runs right through the heart of the company, which produces extraordinarily inventive, highly visual and sometimes surreal work that has been seen all over the world, from Australia to Colombia to Broadway and, yes, the West End.

Chess grand masters have a reputation for possessing the kind of brilliance that’s inclined to tip into madness. Victor Korchnoi claimed he'd played against a dead man, while Wilhelm Steinitz insisted he'd played chess against God by wireless. As for Bobby Fischer, his momentous duel against Boris Spassky for the World Chess Championship in Iceland in 1972 earned him the accolade of being perhaps the most brilliant chess player of all time, but by the time of his death in 2008 he had become an embittered, ranting maniac.

Some directors are just grateful that their movies get funded and released, but Robert Redford has loftier aspirations. Scornful of the routine popcorn-spattered multiplex-filler, he thinks we should be prodded to improve our lot by learning the lessons of history, and says he wants to tell stories about "ordinary people that are affected by larger forces out of their control". This lofty blueprint has brought us Bob's latest behind-the-camera odyssey, The Conspirator.

There were apparently unanimous whoops of joy inside the Royal Ballet this morning, even as brows were wrinkling perplexedly outside, when it was announced that the likeable No 2, administrative director Kevin O’Hare, will succeed director Dame Monica Mason next year. The smiling insider is to head a team involving two of the world’s leading choreographers, Christopher Wheeldon and Wayne McGregor, which holds out the promise of a gold-plated twin-track creative approach uniting both classical and modern. With imminent budget cuts looming, this might be more of a gilt-plated reality, but still, if the personalities gel and Wheeldon and McGregor create several new works for London, the Royal Ballet will be the envy of the world.

A documentary film I made recently, The First Movie, won the Prix Italia. Wim Wenders sent an email which said, “I loved it.” When I showed it at the prestigious Telluride Film Festival last month, nearly 1000 people turned up to see it, and many were in tears. How did all this happen? I’m not sure that I know. But, looking back, I can see a chain of decisions about the making of the film and the impulses behind it. Don’t all artworks have such a chain?

Alfred Hitchcock once claimed to have entered a Hitch look-alike contest and lost, characteristically making a joke out of a long-held private obsession. Doppelgängers, impersonators, imposters and victims of mistaken identity - innocent men wrongly presumed guilty - stalk his movies and television shows and now provide the inspiration for Double Take. Loosely based on a short story, August 25th, 1983 by Jorge Luis Borges, it starts with the idea of the Master locked in a murderous mano a mano with his own double. "Two of you is one too many," as he puts it.

"I like directors whose style you recognise right away: Tim Burton, Terry Gilliam, Emir Kusturica, David Lynch," asserts Jean-Pierre Jeunet, a statement which should surprise none of his followers. Fabled for its attention to minutiae, his work is honed down to the last millimetre, from the immaculately choreographed sight gags to the hyperstylised sets. Delicatessen and The City of Lost Children (both co-directed with Marc Caro), Amelie, A Very Long Engagement, even Jeunet's Stygian contribution to the Alien franchise, are instantly, unmistakably recognisable as his. "If a certain detail isn't in the perfect place, a sequence doesn't work," he says.

Jacques Audiard's A Prophet arrives in Britain laden with plaudits (Best Film at the London Film Festival, Grand Jury Prize in Cannes and a fistful of superlative reviews). Here, in the first of a series of illustrated masterclasses, in which leading directors introduce clips from their work, Audiard reveals the secrets of how he shot two of A Prophet's memorable scenes.