Category Archives: Culture

‘It’s a big turning point’: is this the end of racist monuments in America?

Posted on by

Protests across the country have led to the removal of many statues honouring racist figures – but hundreds still remain

Last week in Richmond, Virginia, protesters scrawled on a monument of the Confederate army commander Robert E Lee as an act of resistance against police brutality and racism. They wrote “Black Lives Matter”, “Blood On Your Hands” and “Stop White Supremacy” in spray paint, often in red.

At night, there was a projection of George Floyd’s face, bearing the words “No Justice, No Peace”.

Continue reading...

Bon Appétit editor Adam Rapoport resigns over ‘brown face’ photo

Posted on by

Several prominent staff members had spoken out about the photograph and the company’s internal culture

Adam Rapoport, the editor in chief of a popular US food magazine, Bon Appétit, has announced his resignation after a 2003 photograph of him dressed in “brown face” surfaced on social media.

In a statement posted on Instagram, Rapoport said he was stepping down “to reflect on the work that I need to do as a human being and to allow Bon Appétit to get to a better place”.

Continue reading...

How Hollywood has tried, and mostly failed, to tackle police racism

Posted on by

From Birth of a Nation to Watchmen, the big and small screens have tried to wrestle with racial tensions within law enforcement with mixed results

As we’ve all seen, when it comes to American police brutality, the gloves are now off and the masks too. Faced with yet more incontrovertible evidence of brutal and racist policing – both the killing of George Floyd and others, and some forces’ response to the public protests – it has become virtually impossible to maintain the image of American law enforcement officers as straightforward protectors and servers of the people. 

Related: George Floyd protests: fired officer to appear in court as calls to defund police sweep US – live

Continue reading...

2,500 rare texts from Islamic world to go online for free

Posted on by

National Library of Israel is digitising collection of manuscripts and books dating back to ninth century

More than 2,500 rare manuscripts and books from the Islamic world covering a period of more than a thousand years are to be made freely available online.

The National Library of Israel (NLI) in Jerusalem is digitising its world-class collection of items in Arabic, Persian, and Turkish, dating from the ninth to the 20th centuries, including spectacularly beautiful Qur’ans and literary works decorated with gold leaf and lapis lazuli.

Continue reading...

Velázquez painting brought to life by historical reenactment group in Seville

Posted on by

Surrender of Breda, immortalised by painter, was significant moment in Dutch war of independence

Anyone wandering along a quiet street in central Seville at 8.30pm on Saturday would have witnessed the odd sight of a 17th-century Dutch governor wearing a Covid-19 mask as he once again handed over his city to Spanish forces.

The Surrender of Breda, a significant moment in the Dutch war of independence immortalised in Diego Velázquez’s eponymous painting, was brought to life by a historical reenactment group to mark the 395th anniversary of the event, and the Spanish painter’s 421st birthday – both on 5 June, albeit 26 years apart.

Continue reading...

Cate Blanchett suffers chainsaw accident on lockdown in East Sussex

Posted on by

The actor has sustained a ‘nick to the head’ in what she told former Australian prime minister Julia Gillard was a minor incident

Cate Blanchett has sustained a cut to the head following a chainsaw accident at her home in East Sussex.

The Oscar-winning actor, who relocated from Sydney to Crowborough last year, was asked how lockdown was going by former Australian prime minister Julia Gillard on her podcast last week.

Continue reading...

‘Show respect and listen’: scenes from Australia’s first Indigenous-run police station

Posted on by

Amid growing global civil unrest against police brutality and racism, a small station 330km west of Uluru is trying things differently

As protests against police brutality and racism have spread around the world in the wake of the death of George Floyd, two new films demonstrate the extremes of police dealings with Indigenous Australians.

The first, which surfaced earlier this week, is the now notorious mobile phone footage of a violent encounter between a New South Wales police constable and an Aboriginal teenager in Surry Hills, Sydney.

Continue reading...

The Sweet bassist Steve Priest dies aged 72

Posted on by

Family did not share a cause of death for the glam rock star, who had 13 Top 20 hits in the 1970s

Steve Priest, bassist and vocalist with glam rock band The Sweet, has died age 72. His bandmates confirmed the news, sharing a statement from the family. The cause of death is not yet known.

Bandmate Andy Scott paid tribute to Priest, describing him as the best bass player he had ever played with. “From that moment in the summer of 1970 when we set off on our musical odyssey the world opened up and the roller coaster ride started.”

Continue reading...

‘These women aren’t victims’: director turns the spotlight on garment workers

Posted on by

Based on true stories, Rubaiyat Hossain’s Made in Bangladesh challenges stereotypes while revealing the relentless pressure of fashion’s supply chain

Rubaiyat Hossain’s latest film, Made in Bangladesh, opens with a scene of pure, visceral panic: young garment workers trapped in a burning factory. Alarms blare, women scream and smoke fills the stairwells.

“A fire or a building collapse is every garment worker’s greatest fear,” says Hossain. When filming the scene, the women seen desperately running for their lives didn’t need much direction. 

Continue reading...

History remixed: the rise of the anachronistic female lead

Posted on by

The lives of women from history, from Catherine the Great to Shirley Jackson, are being brought to the screen with a radical focus on character over facts

It is a point in favor of TV’s sprawling proliferation that one gets, in the course of a year, both a lush, serious historical drama starring Helen Mirren as Catherine the Great on HBO, and its tonal opposite, Hulu’s raucous, gleefully brutal The Great, which puts an asterisk right on the title card: “An Occasionally True Story.” The Great, developed by Tony McNamara, the writer of absurd court send-up The Favourite, cares little for the historical accuracy of the 18th-century Russian monarch. Its Catherine (Elle Fanning) arrives in the backward, hedonistic Russian court as a naive 19-year-old bride in 1761. The real Catherine was 35 and a mother by then, but that’s fine – free from the constraints of biography or pedantic seriousness, The Great’s occasional truth delivers, ironically, a more lasting impression of a real, flesh and blood princess – one slowly but determinedly amassing power, enlightened but ambitious to rule.

Related: The Great review – gleefully garish new series from The Favourite writer

Continue reading...

‘There’s a romanticism about nighthawking, but it’s theft’: when metal detectorists go rogue

Posted on by

Anyone who digs up valuable treasure is supposed to report the find, not hang on to it or sell it to the highest bidder. But even under lockdown, crime continues

If you had seen them, you might have thought they were ramblers or dog walkers – locals snatching some fresh air as the nation hunkered indoors during lockdown. Only their equipment would have given them away: metal detectors, a shovel and a spade, that they humped uncomfortably up a vertiginous path.

They turned off the main road and drove a quarter of a mile down a single track dark with trees, past the occasional house and fields of rolling countryside. It was probably early morning when the car pulled up at a wooden fence, on which were carved the words “GRAY HILL, COMPTON”. From here, it is a stiff, scrambling climb up Gray Hill, towards a cluster of ancient standing stones that loom out of scrubland like broken teeth. Here, if the weather is clear, you can look out towards the Severn estuary.

Continue reading...

Tiger King’s Carole Baskin handed control of Joe Exotic’s zoo

Posted on by

Baskin, whose rivalry with Exotic was documented in the Netflix hit, is now the owner of the Oklahoma premises following court proceedings

Beleaguered zoo owner Joe Exotic, subject of Netflix’s hit documentary series Tiger King, has now suffered the indignity of rival Carole Baskin gaining control of what was once his zoo. Baskin, a self-styled conservationist and owner of the Big Cat Rescue facility in Hillsborough County, Florida, has been given control of the Wynnewood, Oklahoma premises by courts, after Exotic failed to pay her $1m in copyright and trademark suits.

Exotic – real name Joseph Maldonado-Passage – is currently in prison, having been found guilty of 17 counts of animal abuse and a murder-for-hire plot against Baskin, and sentenced to 22 years.

Continue reading...

Christo: ‘His gorgeous abstractions made you gawp with disbelief’

Posted on by

From a curtain across Colorado to the wrapping up of everything from the Sydney coast to the Berlin Reichstag, his grandiose art caused wonder all over the world

He changed cityscapes, landscapes, buildings, coastlines, lakes and islands, making us look afresh at our surroundings. At its most daring and spectacular, Christo’s work entered the collective consciousness, overturning our sense of scale and place in the world. At its best, his work was disruptive and transformative, leaving surprise and wonder in its wake. 

Christo’s is the kind of art that persists in the imagination, however temporary his projects have been (some lasted only a few days) and however few people encountered his theatrical interventions for themselves. Wasn’t he the one who wrapped the Reichstag in Berlin in a shroud, and a coastline near Sydney? His art became a kind of rumour, perhaps almost a myth. 

Continue reading...

Christo, artist who wrapped the Reichstag, dies aged 84

Posted on by

Bulgarian creator of large-scale public artworks worked in collaboration with wife Jeanne-Claude

The artist Christo, known for wrapping buildings including Berlin’s Reichstag, and also swathing areas of coast and entire islands in fabric, has died aged 84. The news was confirmed on his official Facebook page, which said that he died of natural causes at his home in New York.

Born Christo Vladimirov Javacheff in Bulgaria, Christo studied in Sofia and then defected to the west in 1957, stowing away on a train from Prague to Vienna. Two years later he met Frenchwoman Jeanne-Claude Denat de Guillebon, who would become his artistic partner and wife until her death in 2009.

Continue reading...

Leaning Tower of Pisa among sites in Italy to reopen after lockdown

Posted on by

Strict safety measures in place, as Colosseum and others also prepare to welcome visitors again

Some of Italy’s most famous cultural sites are coming back to life after being closed for more than three months as a result of the coronavirus pandemic.

The Leaning Tower of Pisa reopened on Saturday, the Colosseum and Vatican Museums will welcome visitors again from Monday and Florence’s Uffizi gallery from Tuesday.

Continue reading...

Tributes paid to Boys from the Blackstuff actor Michael Angelis

Posted on by

Writer Jack Thorne among those to pay their respects to Angelis, who has died aged 68

Tributes have been paid after the death of Michael Angelis, an actor who will be remembered as the morose rabbit-obsessed Lucien from The Liver Birds, the desperate Chrissie in Boys from the Blackstuff, and the narrator of Thomas the Tank Engine.

Angelis died suddenly while at home with his wife on Saturday, his agent said. He was 68.

Continue reading...

Yesterday credits row shows trouble’s never far away in film writing

Posted on by

Jack Barth’s claim he did not receive credit he deserved shines light on movie industry machinations

As a premise, it is surprisingly simple: a young musician who is the only person in the world to know the Beatles’ back catalogue forges a successful career by covering their songs. But the more complex question of who should get credit for the Hollywood movie it became has put the opaque machinations of the film industry in the spotlight.

The idea ultimately became Yesterday, the Richard Curtis film directed by Danny Boyle and starring Himesh Patel, which made more than £125m at the box office worldwide. But Jack Barth, a writer whose work has appeared on The Simpsons, claimed last week he had not received the full credit he said he deserved for writing the original screenplay that provided the basis for the film.

Continue reading...

Michael Angelis, Thomas the Tank Engine narrator, dies aged 76

Posted on by

The Liverpudlian actor voiced the children’s programme for 13 series and was known for TV work in The Liver Birds and Auf Wiedersehen, Pet

Michael Angelis, best known as the narrator of Thomas the Tank Engine series Thomas and Friends, has died at the age of 76. 

The actor died suddenly while at home with his wife on Saturday, his agent said.

Continue reading...

Cook Off, the no-budget romcom that became the first Zimbabwean film on Netflix

Posted on by

Shot in the chaotic last days of Robert Mugabe’s regime, Cook Off is a feel-good tale of resilience and hope

A Zimbabwean film about a woman who enters a TV cooking show and which cost only $8,000 to make has become the first feature from the country to make it onto Netflix.

“Seeing myself on Netflix, I have to punch myself every day. Like, is that really me?” asked actress Tendaiishe Chitima, star of Cook Off, which has now been acquired by the streaming giant.

Continue reading...