race issues
SelmaWednesday, 04 February 2015![]() Few modern figures can match the towering legacy of civil rights luminary Martin Luther King, and any filmmaker should be rightly intimidated when approaching a biopic. Undaunted, Ava DuVernay has created something remarkable. She pitches her film... Read more... |
theartsdesk Q&A: Playwright Ayub Khan DinSunday, 11 January 2015![]() It’s been quite a journey for Ayub Khan Din. Born in 1961, the acclaimed playwright grew up in a crowded Salford household, the youngest child of a Pakistani father and a white English mother. The cultural clashes he witnessed – as his Anglicised... Read more... |
Eastern BoysMonday, 01 December 2014![]() Eastern Boys is a disturbing film. Robin Campillo’s second feature as director catches the often aggressive world of immigrant grifters in Paris – they’re a gang of young men largely from the former Soviet Union – and their interaction with the... Read more... |
Concerning ViolenceMonday, 24 November 2014![]() In Concerning Violence Göran Hugo Olsson has created an almanac documentary drawing on material from Swedish television archives, filmed by a number of directors in Africa, largely in the 1970s. It’s fascinating footage, covering a number of... Read more... |
The Scottsboro Boys, Garrick TheatreTuesday, 21 October 2014![]() You come away from The Scottsboro Boys sure of two things: that the next cakewalk you hear will induce queasiness and that the show's director/choreographer Susan Stroman is some kind of genius. This kick-ass West End premiere, now happily... Read more... |
The House That Will Not Stand, Tricycle TheatreTuesday, 21 October 2014![]() Bigger is better in the Tricycle’s latest piece of reclaimed black history. African-American writer Marcus Gardley’s stimulating play, which transports Lorca’s The House of Bernarda Alba to 1836 New Orleans and a significant shift in the evolving... Read more... |
Albion, Bush TheatreSaturday, 20 September 2014![]() Opening on the day after the Scottish Referendum, Chris Thompson’s new play has a timely, even incendiary, title. It also recalls the sad little song ‘Albion’ by Pete Doherty and Babyshambles. This time, however, The Albion is the name of an East... Read more... |
The World's War: Forgotten Soldiers of Empire, BBC TwoThursday, 07 August 2014![]() We call it the First World War, but in Western Europe at least, most of the scrutiny is confined to what happened to Britain, France and Germany (with a side order of Russia) from 1914-18. The writer and presenter of this two-part series, David... Read more... |
BelleThursday, 12 June 2014![]() Sadly the battle to shape stories from a female perspective, or even to tell stories about women is far from over. The Centre for the Study of Women in Television and Film at San Diego State University recently found that women represented only... Read more... |
An Episode in the Life of an Iron PickerMonday, 21 April 2014![]() We see the harshness of everyday life in Danis Tanović’s An Episode in the Life of an Iron Picker first in its snowy, subsistence landscapes, as hero Nazif goes out to the forest to bring in whatever wood he can find to keep the family home warm.... Read more... |
DVD: White DogTuesday, 18 March 2014![]() Once in his stride as a director, Samuel Fuller never shied away from the controversial. The mental-hospital set Shock Corridor, from 1963, prefigured One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and touched on the arms race, incest, racism and the Korean War. A... Read more... |
We Are Proud To Present..., Bush TheatreMonday, 10 March 2014![]() The full title of Jackie Sibblies Drury's play, first produced in Chicago in 2012, is deliberately gauche and in need of editing. No review is complete without it, however, so here it is: We Are Proud To Present A Presentation About The Herero... Read more... |
