Category Archives: Culture

No Other Land co-director condemns Academy’s letter to members after Hamdan Ballal attack

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Yuval Abraham criticised the Academy’s statement defending its silence after Israeli settlers attacked his co-director Hamdan Ballal

The Israeli director of the Oscar-winning documentary No Other Land has condemned the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for its response to a violent attack on his Palestinian co-director Hamdan Ballal, who was beaten by Israeli settlers and detained by Israeli forces in the West Bank on Monday.

Earlier this week, Israeli journalist and filmmaker Yuval Abraham criticised the Academy for failing to publicly speak out in support of Ballal. Now he has criticised a statement issued by the Academy to its members on Wednesday, in which it appeared to defend its silence.

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French-Algerian author Boualem Sansal sentenced to five years in prison

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French president Emmanuel Macron has called for authorities to free the novelist who was convicted in Algeria for allegedly undermining the country’s territorial integrity

French president Emmanuel Macron has called on Algeria to free Boualem Sansal, after the French-Algerian novelist was on Thursday sentenced to five years in prison and fined for allegedly undermining Algeria’s territorial integrity.

Sansal was arrested on 16 November at Algiers airport on arrival from Paris, after saying in an interview with a far-right French media outlet Frontières that France unfairly ceded Moroccan territory to Algeria during the colonial era.

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Boulder, Colorado, to be new home for the Sundance film festival

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The festival, started by Robert Redford in 1978, will move from its previous home in Park City, Utah, for 2027

Boulder, Colorado, has been named as the new home for the Sundance film festival starting in 2027.

The festival, which was started in 1978 by Robert Redford, will move from its home in Park City, Utah. Sundance brings more than 20,000 people a year to the ski town, which many had seen as too small to house something of this size.

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The White Lotus ‘goes too far’: Duke University unhappy over their prominence in show

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Two characters in the troubled Ratliff family are Duke alumni, but the association has displeased the US university

  • This article contains spoilers for the third season of The White Lotus

In the aftermath of an incestuous threesome, many viewers of the latest season of The White Lotus may think the show has stepped over a line. But audiences have an unlikely ally in Duke University, which is unhappy that two characters happen to be Duke alumni.

The third season of the popular TV show, which follows wealthy guests and workers at a luxury resort in Thailand, includes the Ratliff family, with the father, Timothy (played by Jason Isaacs) and one of his sons, Saxon (Patrick Schwarzenegger) both having attended Duke, a prestigious institution located in Durham, North Carolina.

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‘It was revenge for our movie’: Oscar winner says soldiers helped settlers attack him in West Bank

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Hamdan Ballal says Israeli soldiers beat him with their rifle butts and threatened to kill him

The Oscar-winning Palestinian film director Hamdan Ballal has said that Israeli settlers who attacked him were aided by two Israeli soldiers, who beat him with the butt of their rifles outside his home and threatened to kill him.

In an interview with the Guardian, Ballal, one of the four directors of the film No Other Land, which documents the destruction of villages in the West Bank and won best documentary at this year’s Academy Awards, recounted how on Monday two Israeli soldiers first encircled him while a settler was assaulting him, before violently striking him on the head and threatening to shoot him.

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Iowa law banning books including 1984 and Ulysses blocked by US federal judge

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Judge rules that law banning school libraries and classrooms from carrying books depicting sex acts had been applied unconstitutionally

A lawsuit brought by publishers and authors including John Green and Jodi Picoult has led to a portion of a law banning Iowa school libraries and classrooms from carrying books depicting sex acts being halted.

On Tuesday, a federal judge temporarily blocked the measure, writing that it had been applied unconstitutionally in many schools and that books of “undeniable political, artistic, literary, and/or scientific value” had been caught up in it, including Ulysses by James Joyce, Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell, Beloved by Toni Morrison and The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini.

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Woman tells court Gérard Depardieu groped her buttocks and breasts on set

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Film assistant says actor groped her several times in three incidents while filming Les Volets Verts

The French actor Gérard Depardieu sexually assaulted an assistant director on three occasions while she was working with him on a film shoot, placing his hands on her buttocks and breasts, leaving her feeling “petrified”, the woman told Paris’s criminal court on Wednesday.

Depardieu – the biggest French cinema star to face trial for sexual assault since the #MeToo movement – is charged with sexually assaulting the assistant director three times during the shooting of the feature film Les Volets Verts (The Green Shutters) in Paris in 2021.

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Hamdan Ballal: Oscar-winning Palestinian director attacked by Israeli settlers and arrested

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Director of No Other Land attacked by armed settlers in West Bank and handed to Israeli military, witnesses say

A Palestinian director of the Oscar-winning documentary No Other Land has been arrested by the Israeli army after masked settlers attacked his house.

According to five Jewish American activists who witnessed the attack, Hamdan Ballal, one of the four directors of the the film that documented the destruction of villages in the West Bank, was surrounded and attacked by a group of about 15 armed settlers in Susya in the Masafer Yatta area south of Hebron.

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‘Impressive, ingenious and affecting’ poem about missing an absent son wins National Poetry Competition

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Fiona Larkin’s poem uses Finnish grammar to explore her feelings about her son’s move from the UK to Brisbane

A poem inspired by the writer’s experience missing her son after he moved from the UK to Australia has won this year’s £5,000 National Poetry Competition.

Fiona Larkin’s poem, Absence has a grammar, was picked from nearly 22,000 entries.

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Gérard Depardieu to appear in Paris court over sexual assault allegations

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Actor, 76, denies claims made by assistant director and set designer who worked with him on Les Volets Verts

Gérard Depardieu will become the most high-profile French person to stand trial on #MeToo abuse allegations when he appears in a Paris court on Monday.

The actor, a titan of French cinema with more than 200 films and television series to his name, is accused of sexually assaulting two women during a film shoot in 2021.

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Andy Peebles, former Radio 1 DJ and presenter, dies aged 76

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Host of Top of the Pops and My Top Twelve among other shows was one of last people to interview John Lennon

Andy Peebles, the former Radio 1 DJ and presenter who was one of the last people to interview John Lennon, has died aged 76, his family has confirmed.

Peebles began his radio career in Manchester in 1973 and joined Radio 1 in 1978, where he was a familiar voice for 14 years.

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The Sex Pistols rock London with first gig at 100 Club in 50 years

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Band members were joined on stage by former Gallows frontman Frank Carter as stars and fans welcomed their return

There was anticipation on Oxford Street in London as the Sex Pistols rocked the 100 Club for the first time in more than half a century, playing classic tunes for a crowd of creaking punks.

In a hot and sweaty venue, which harkened back to the band’s glory days, they darted on stage like squaddies on a march, to roars from the audience. They were celebrated by stars and superfans such as Noel Gallagher, Bobby Gillespie and the Jam frontman, Paul Weller.

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Mutiny brews in French bookshops over Hachette owner’s media grip

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Booksellers take stand against influence of conservative billionaire by limiting orders of his company’s books and placing them on lower shelves

A conservative Catholic billionaire and media owner is facing an independent bookshop rebellion in France over his influence in the publishing world.

Dozens of independent booksellers are trying to counter the growing influence of Vincent Bolloré, whose vast cultural empire includes television, radio, the Sunday paper Le Journal du Dimanche, and also, since 2023, the biggest book publishing and distribution conglomerate in France, Hachette Livre.

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Comedian Katherine Ryan reveals second skin cancer diagnosis

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Standup, 41, says she was initially given all-clear by private doctor after raising concerns about a mole

The comedian Katherine Ryan has received a second skin cancer diagnosis after raising concerns about a mole on her arm.

Ryan attended a private clinic where a doctor who also works for the NHS dismissed her concerns about melanoma and gave her the all-clear, but she went back and a test revealed the mole was cancerous.

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Karla Sofía Gascón says she is ‘less racist than Gandhi’ on return to public eye

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Actor suggests she may have been intentionally smeared and says ‘no one has to forgive me’ after recent controversy

Karla Sofía Gascón has described herself as “less racist than Gandhi” and insisted “no one has to forgive me for anything” as she returns to the public eye after the emergence of offensive social media posts widely thought to have torpedoed the Oscar hopes of her film Emilia Pérez.

The Spanish performer, who became the first transgender woman to be nominated for a best actress Oscar, was dropped from the film’s campaigning materials by its studio, Netflix, and criticised by colleagues and prominent politicians after the series of old racist and Islamophobic tweets came to light.

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UK watchdog bans ‘shocking’ ads in mobile games that objectified women

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Investigation uncovered eight adverts that portrayed women in a harmful or degrading way, says ASA

An investigation by the UK advertising watchdog has found a number of shocking ads in mobile gaming apps that depict women as sexual objects, use pornographic tropes, and feature non-consensual sexual scenarios involving “violent and coercive control”.

The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) used avatars, which mimic the browsing behaviour of different gender and age groups, to monitor ads served when mobile games are open and identify breaches of the UK code.

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Semisonic denounces White House use of ‘Closing Time’ in deportation video

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Grammy-nominated band says Trump administration ‘missed the point’ and song is about ‘joy, possibilities, hope’

The band Semisonic has said the Donald Trump White House “missed the point” of its hit Closing Time “entirely” when the administration used the Emmy-nominated song in a social media post showing a shackled person being deported.

A statement from Semisonic also said the White House did not have permission to use the song in that manner.

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‘Drake lost a rap battle’: Universal files motion to dismiss rapper’s ‘misguided’ lawsuit

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Drake’s attorneys accuse Universal of being ‘a greedy company’ that is ‘finally being held responsible for profiting from dangerous misinformation’.

Universal Music Group have moved to dismiss Drake’s defamation suit, characterising it as “a misguided attempt” by the Canadian rapper to “salve his wounds” after he “lost a rap battle” with rival Kendrick Lamar.

In the motion, filed on Monday in the US district court for the southern district of New York, Universal Music Group (UMG), which represents both artists, claimed that Drake “lost a rap battle that he provoked and in which he willingly participated.

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Norwegian writer Dag Solstad dies aged 83

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A hugely influential novelist and critic, Solstad won the Norwegian Critics prize three times, and his work was translated by Haruki Murakami

Dag Solstad, a towering figure of Norwegian letters admired by literary greats around the world, has died aged 83.

Known for prose combining existential despair, political subjects and a droll sense of humour, Solstad won the Norwegian critics prize for literature an unprecedented three times.

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Wendy Williams’s tragic tale shines a light on court-ordered conservatorship

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Former talkshow host takes public her battle to remove her guardian, ordered by a court due to dementia and aphasia

The note dropped from the upper floor window of an assisted living facility in New York on the morning of 10 March contained a simple message: “Help! Wendy!!” it read.

For any patient inside, it would have been tragic. But, astonishingly, the writer of this note was Wendy Williams, a trailblazing television talkshow host and once one of the most recognisble daytime TV faces in America.

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