From the shanty towns of Khlong Toei to the hidden parts of Chinatown, Cody Ellingham walked Thailand’s capital every night for five weeks to photograph the city for his book Bangkok Phosphors
Category Archives: Culture
Making waves: Dadaab refugee camp’s only female radio journalist
Exiled Somali Kamil Ahmed says her job at Gargaar FM is more important than ever as the threat of closure hangs over the camp
Sitting in a small shipping container, Kamil Ahmed, 20, prepares to begin her live radio show.
“I feel like the whole community is waiting for me,” the only female reporter at the station says, flicking through her notebook.
Continue reading...Milan Kundera’s Czech citizenship restored after 40 years
The Unbearable Lightness of Being’s author has lived in France since fleeing communism in 1975, and has previously questioned ‘the notion of home’
After more than 40 years in exile, Milan Kundera, the Czech-born author of The Unbearable Lightness of Being, has been given back the citizenship of his homeland.
Petr Drulák, the Czech Republic’s ambassador to France, told public television he visited the 90-year-old author in his Paris apartment last Thursday to hand deliver his citizenship certificate.
Continue reading...Melania Trump suspects Roger Stone behind nude photo leak, new book claims
In Free, Melania, obtained by the Guardian, Kate Bennett also reports that president and first lady sleep in separate rooms
Melania Trump suspects Roger Stone, a longtime ally and adviser to Donald Trump, of being behind the release of nude photos from her modelling past, a new book claims.
Related: Trump's 'demeaning fake orgasm' made me speak out – ex-FBI lawyer Lisa Page
Continue reading...And the 2019 Braddies go to … Peter Bradshaw’s film picks of the year
Ahead of the launch on Tuesday of the Guardian’s films of the year countdown, our critic selects his personal choice of the movies, directors and performances of 2019
• The Braddies are listed in alphabetical order, rather than ranked in terms of merit
Once again, the awards season comes to its climax with my “Braddies” for the calendar year, a selection of my personal awards that exists entirely independently of Guardian Film’s best-of-the-year countdown.
As ever, there are 10 “nominees” in 10 categories: film, director, actor, actress, supporting Actor, supporting Actress, documentary, cinematography, screenplay, directorial debut. There is also the single-entry nomination in the special category: quirkiest future cult classic most likely to beoverlooked by the boomer MSM establishment. The nominees are listed in alphabetical order and readers are invited to vote below the line for their preferred winner – and complain about omissions.
Continue reading...Syrian war documentary For Sama triumphs at British independent film awards
The chronicle of an activist who filmed the destruction in Aleppo wins prizes for best film, documentary, director and editing
For Sama, the acclaimed documentary about life under siege in the Syrian city of Aleppo, has unexpectedly triumphed at the British independent film awards, winning the top prize, best British independent film, as well as best documentary and best director for Waad al-Kateab and Edward Watts.
Described by the Guardian’s Mike McCahill as a film to “break your heart and sear your soul”, For Sama is a chronicle filmed by Syrian activist-director al-Kateab as Aleppo is targeted during the country’s ongoing civil war. Al-Kateab spends much of the time in a hospital where her husband, Hamza, works, recording the destruction and horror. For Sama won a total of four Bifas, including best editing – previously announced with other Bifa “craft” awards on 15 November.
Continue reading...Photographic discovery is a window into Soviet-era Ukraine photo essay
In the remains of a bombed-out Soviet darkroom, hundreds of rolls of film were discovered rotting among the rubble by the photojournalist Samuel Eder earlier this year. He shares his experience in recovering these fragments of history and of reuniting them with their subjects
When war broke out in eastern Ukraine in 2014, thousands of people were forced to flee their homes, transforming thriving communities into ghost towns overnight. As classrooms became sniper nests, family homes became barracks and community centres turned into ammunition caches, precious remnants of peacetime life were consumed by the war. Among these lost relics are the remains of a bombed-out Soviet photographic lab – with hundreds of rolls of film left rotting among the rubble.
Continue reading...Atlantics review – poetic Dakar love story
A prosaic script lets down Mati Diop’s visually arresting, ghostly first feature
Although set in suburban Dakar, this beguiling debut feature from Mati Diop is a film that walks between worlds. The story is woven in the hinterland amid wealth and poverty, love and expediency, this life and the supernatural. It’s silkily enigmatic and unpredictable, and certainly unlike anything else you will see this year.
It took me a second viewing to engage with the tonal shifts of the story of Ada (Mame Bineta Sane), promised in marriage to a wealthy man, but who loves Souleiman (Ibrahima Traore), a construction worker who disappears at sea in search of a better life. Diop has a keen eye for a poetic image: the film opens with a shot of bustling streets dwarfed by the monstrous, looming haunch of a half-built tower. Later, there’s an achingly pensive shot of the sleeping quarters of the men who have left, their beds still rumpled from warm bodies; bottles of Victory aftershave primed for a night out that will never come. But the lyricism of the photography by Claire Mathon is not matched by the screenplay, which Diop co-wrote with Olivier Demangel and which seems rather flat and declamatory next to the eerie magic of the film’s gauzy light.
Continue reading...‘You can always laugh’: Angola’s new wave of standup comedians
In a country scarred by war, corruption and inequality, a vibrant comedy scene has emerged
A hot and humid Sunday night in Luanda. In a poor neighbourhood near the centre of the Angolan capital, bats wheel in the darkness and loud techno drowns out the traffic on the potholed road. A young crowd has packed into a cavernous and crumbling concrete church in search of comic, rather than spiritual, relief.
Many have come to see Artur Pop, a comedian from a tough nearby neighbourhood who draws his material from the lives of young people such as those who have paid 1,000 kwanza – £1.28 at black market exchange rates, or more than £1.55 at the official bank rate – for the evening’s entertainment.
Continue reading...Hamilton star accuses London blues bar of racial profiling
Giles Terera claims Ain’t Nothin’ But blues bar denied group of actors entry because they were black
A star of the hit musical Hamilton has accused a Soho bar of racial profiling, claiming that it denied a group of actors entry because they were black.
Giles Terera said the Ain’t Nothin’ But blues bar had allowed 10 white people next to them to enter, but that the group of eight black actors were turned away.
Continue reading...‘Parenting here means checking the ingredients of teargas’: my return to Hong Kong
Emma-Lee Moss, who makes music as Emmy the Great, on life, new motherhood and her divided birthplace
It feels as if the entire world’s press is there, standing on the pavement outside the Foreign Correspondents’ Club. They’re in Hong Kong to cover the protests, but tonight, the Friday before National Day, they’re off duty. From the bottom of the hill, the bars of Lan Kwai Fong thrum reliably. There is an uneasy peace in the air, as though we all know that, three days from now, the long-running citywide demonstrations will reach a violent new apex.
I’ve walked this route hundreds of times, and been a parade of different selves. I’ve been a teenager trying to score 7-11 beer on the spot where Chungking Express was filmed. I’ve been a visiting writer ordering drinks at the FCC bar. But now I am the mother and primary carer of a nine-month-old, and my time out has been negotiated. Quite frankly, I am dazzled by the world after 7pm. As I shuffle past the media crowd, I feel a pull, a yearning. In another life, I’d be there with them. When I moved back to Hong Kong in 2018, it was in search of stories about the strange, convoluted city I was born in.
Continue reading...DC drops Batman image after claims it supports Hong Kong unrest
Picture trailing new Frank Miller comic showed Batwoman throwing a molotov cocktail against the legend: ‘The future is young’
DC Comics has pulled an image advertising its new Batman comic on social media following an angry backlash in China, where some believed it implied support of the ongoing protests in Hong Kong.
The since-deleted image showed Batwoman throwing a molotov cocktail against a backdrop of pink lettering reading: “The future is young.” Intended to promote Frank Miller and Rafael Grampá’s forthcoming Batman title Dark Knight Returns: The Golden Child, it was shared on DC’s social media earlier this week.
Continue reading...‘It’s cool now’: why Dungeons & Dragons is casting its spell again
Thanks to the popularity of open-world video games – and Stranger Things – a new generation has rediscovered the communal pleasures of the 80s role-playing phenomenon
Not long ago, my sons, like many other preteens, were obsessed with Fortnite. It was all they played, all they talked about, all they spent their pocket money on. But one rainy afternoon this summer, my youngest took out the D&D starter kit we’d bought him for Christmas and began to study it. Some friends came round and they played for hours. Since then, they haven’t really stopped.
This is not an isolated incident. Originally released in 1974, Dungeons & Dragons is having what we now call “a moment”. The company behind the game, Wizards of the Coast, which bought the rights from original creator TSR, estimates that there are currently 40 million players worldwide, with new starters up 25% year on year, as its popularity grows and rules are translated into new languages.
Continue reading...‘A very nice guy’: how Godfrey Gao made it to the top
The late film star was a trailblazer for diversity in fashion and film. His loss deprives the growing Chinese entertainment industry of a fine talent
Taiwanese-Canadian actor Godfrey Gao was famous for being the first Asian international supermodel but he was much more than just a pretty face – he had a reputation for being one of the friendliest stars in an intensely competitive industry.
“He was known for being a very nice guy,” says Cecilia Pidgeon, a former celebrity editor at GQ China. “He had a very good reputation among other actors. He was always nice to his fans. All of the colleagues he worked with only had good things to say.”
Continue reading...Viva Selena! How a murdered pop star gives hope to Latinos
Twenty-five years after her death – and with a Netflix series on the way – Selena’s approach to straddling Mexican and American identities is proving invaluable in the age of Trump
On a sticky Sunday in August, more than 5,000 people are standing through sporadic torrents of rain to attend a free outdoor concert in New York’s Central Park. The event, Selena for Sanctuary, has been organised in response to the Trump administration’s severe policies on undocumented individuals, and the crowd has gathered to support immigrant-rights organisations such as Make the Road New York – all in the name of the pop star Selena Quintanilla.
Selena has been dead for nearly 25 years. The superstar was shot and killed in 1995, at the age of 23, by her fanclub manager, Yolanda Saldívar. Yet at the concert, she seems more present than ever: fans wear T-shirts emblazoned with her wide, red-lipped smile. Others wear one-piece jumpsuits and jackets with gleaming rhinestones, nods to the sparkling stage outfits Selena would often make herself. From the stage, a parade of up-and-coming bilingual artists belts out covers of her classic cumbia hits: Mexican-American indie star Cuco offers his take on Bidi Bidi Bom Bom, dream-pop newcomer Ambar Lucid sings Techno Cumbia, and Colombian-American singer Kali Uchis performs Como la Flor. Their songs are a celebration during a turbulent time, reflecting how Selena still serves as a symbol of hope in the fight for immigrants’ rights.
Continue reading...Clive James, writer, broadcaster and TV critic, dies aged 80
James died at his home in Cambridge on Sunday almost 10 years after his first terminal diagnosis
Clive James, the broadcaster, poet and television critic, has died aged 80 after a long illness.
The Australian died at his home in Cambridge on Sunday, his agent confirmed. A private funeral attended by family and close friends took place in the chapel at Pembroke College, Cambridge, on Wednesday afternoon.
Continue reading...Sir Jonathan Miller, writer and director, dies aged 85
Theatre director also had career in medicine and was member of Beyond the Fringe
Sir Jonathan Miller, the writer, theatre and opera director, and member of the Beyond the Fringe comedy team, has died at the age of 85.
In a statement his family said Miller died “peacefully at home following a long battle with Alzheimer’s”.
Continue reading...Archive of blood: how photographer Letizia Battaglia shot the mafia and lived
Her shocking pictures told the truth about mafia murders – and earned her death threats. Ahead of a powerful film about her extraordinary life, we meet the woman who dared to confront killers. Warning: contains graphic imagery
Letizia Battaglia can still remember the first corpse she photographed: a man lying beneath an olive tree in a field in rural Sicily. It remains a viscerally unsettling image, made all the more so by its telling details: the dead man’s shoeless left foot, the resigned gaze of the policeman guarding the body, the olive leaves hanging low over the spreadeagled torso. The fact that he was a mafioso murdered in a local feud is, insists Battaglia, neither here nor there. “Everyone,” she says quietly, “is equal in death.”
What has stayed with her, over 40 years later, is the smell that hung in the summer air that day and was carried on the breeze. “It was very hot and he had been dead for a few days,” she says, drawing deeply on a cigarette. “Now, as soon as you ask about this photograph, it comes back to me. I can almost feel it, this atmosphere of death.”
Continue reading...Hungary pulls out of Eurovision amid rise in anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric
No reason given for withdrawal from show, called ‘homosexual flotilla’ by pro-Orbán journalist
Hungary will not participate in next year’s Eurovision song contest, amid speculation the decision was taken because the competition is “too gay” for the taste of the country’s far-right government and public media bosses.
While no official reason has been given for the withdrawal, the move comes amid an increase in homophobic rhetoric in Hungary, where the anti-migration prime minister, Viktor Orbán, has launched a “family first” policy aimed at helping traditional families and boosting birth rates.
Continue reading...Melanie C: ‘I’ve had an incredible career. It’s time I accepted myself’
It’s 20 years since Spice Girl Melanie Chisholm went solo, but, she says, it has taken until 2019 – ironically, the year of the band’s reunion tour – for her to really find herself
It’s often said that meeting a Spice Girl feels a lot like encountering a cartoon character. You can see it with unfiltered Mel B, poised Victoria and Emma, still resolutely family-friendly at 43. Geri’s modern lady-of-the-manor act is the antithesis of her old outrageousness, yet she is still swimming in camp. But with Mel C – or Melanie C as she styles herself these days – that’s not the case.
Even if she was your favourite Spice Girl, and you have never met one before, and she turns up to your interview in a closed Kings Cross bar wearing a hoodie and trackies – just as she would have done when Melanie Chisholm became Sporty Spice 25 years ago – it’s still only the little things that nod to the fact she was in one of the biggest girl groups of all time. She speaks quietly, often in an awed whisper, and is not beholden to the propaganda-like version of the Spice Girls’ story that some of her bandmates uphold.
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