Loach said it was ‘simply unacceptable’ that the cinema is hosting the Seret film festival
Ken Loach and Mike Leigh have resigned as patrons of the Phoenix cinema in London in protest over the venue hosting an Israeli state-sponsored film festival.
The cinema – one of the UK’s oldest – is holding a private screening of Supernova: The Music Festival Massacre, as part of the international Seret film festival on Thursday night.
Continue reading...Two people arrested over theft of José Capelo portraits in Madrid in 2015 – one of which is still missing
Police in Madrid have recovered a portrait by Francis Bacon, valued at €5m (£4.3m), which was one of five works by the famously thirsty and hell-raising artist that were stolen from the home of the painting’s subject almost a decade ago.
The pictures, whose total value has been put at €25m, disappeared in 2015 after a break-in at the Madrid home of José Capelo, a Spanish banker and close friend of Bacon who sat for the painter.
Continue reading...Crystal McKinney’s suit is sixth complaint in six months against rapper, claiming he assaulted her in 2003 at his New York studio
Hip-hop mogul Sean “Diddy” Combs is facing a new lawsuit from former model Crystal McKinney who says she was forced to perform oral sex on him at his recording studio in New York City in 2003. This comes just days after Combs says he took “full responsibility” for beating ex-girlfriend Cassie after a video of that incident surfaced.
The new lawsuit – the sixth complaint of sexual assault filed against Combs in six months – alleges that McKinney, then 22, met Combs at a Men’s Fashion Week event at a Manhattan restaurant.
Continue reading...Ali Abbasi’s film, starring Sebastian Stan, presents a fictionalised account of an incident recorded in Ivana Trump’s 1990 divorce deposition, and since retracted
Donald Trump is depicted as a rapist who assaulted his first wife, Ivana, in a new biopic, The Apprentice, which has its world premiere in competition at this year’s Cannes film festival on Monday. Directed by the Iranian-Danish film-maker Ali Abbasi, the drama provides a fictionalised account of a 1989 incident that was previously detailed in the couple’s divorce proceedings.
The scene, which occurs near the end of The Apprentice, depicts Trump reacting with fury after Ivana disparages his physical appearance. “You have a face like a fucking orange,” she tells him. “You’re getting fat, you’re getting ugly, and you’re getting bald.” The future president is then shown forcing his wife to the floor and raping her. “Did I find your G-spot?” he asks in the film.
Continue reading...Two installations host a 24/7 live stream in both cities, but a small number of visitors initially abused the opportunity
The live video portal linking Dublin, Ireland, to New York, New York, has reopened after unruly behavior got the modern art sculpture temporarily shut down.
The two installations making up the Portal – created by the Lithuanian artist Benediktas Gylys – host a 24/7 live stream in both cities so people can see and interact with each other. One installation is located in the Flatiron district of New York, and the other is on Dublin’s popular O’Connell Street.
Continue reading...The subversive work of Eliza Haywood, the feminist forerunner of the TV show’s gossip columnist, is about to be republished
She is the real-life Lady Whistledown, an eyebrow-raising female writer who penned a salacious anonymous gossip sheet that skewered 18th-century London society.
Like the fictional pamphlet from Netflix hit Bridgerton, which returned for a third series last week, Eliza Haywood’s The Parrot, published in 1746, has a distinctive, mocking voice that punches up and “speaks truth to power”. Now, a new book will republish Haywood’s funny, subversive periodical, which she wrote from the perspective of an angry green parrot, and seek to raise awareness of her groundbreaking work.
Continue reading...Book prompts conflict over claims of Métis identity in eastern part of country where group doesn’t have a homeland or deep historic ties
A graphic novel investigating Indigenous identity in Canada has prompted outrage from Métis groups, who say the book undermines their history and represents an attack on their sovereignty.
The work is the result of a third-year history seminar at Dalhousie University, where students collaborated on a book examining thorny questions over ancestry and identity.
Continue reading...Cast member of Palme d’Or contender shot in Kent says the high number of chaperones and intimacy coordinators on set was over the top
Is Britain leading the way in protecting young people and children from the potential traumas of working on a film set, or has it all gone far too far? Two of the most prominent European stars attending the Cannes film festival, both with high-profile premieres, have very different views.
Franz Rogowski, the acclaimed German actor who plays a key role in Bird, British director Andrea Arnold’s contender for the top Palme d’Or prize, said this weekend that the proliferation of chaperones and intimacy coordinators that had been required on the shoot on location in Kent qualified as well-intended “madness”.
Continue reading...The cultural sector falls short on other measures of diversity too, with 9o% of workers white, says new report
Six in 10 of all arts and culture workers in the UK now come from middle-class backgrounds, compared with just over 42% of the wider workforce, according to new research.
And while 23% of the UK workforce is from a working-class background, working-class people are underrepresented in every area of arts and culture. They make up 8.4% of those working in film, TV, radio and photography, while in museums, archives and libraries, the proportion is only 5.2%.
Continue reading...Locals hope TV adaptation of One Hundred Years of Solitude will bring new life to Aracataca, birthplace of author’s magical realism
In sweltering mid-afternoon heat, children splash in the clear water of the canal that threads through town as elderly neighbours look on from rocking chairs on the porches of their sun-washed houses. Butterflies spring from every bush, sometimes fluttering together in kaleidoscopes.
At the foot of Colombia’s Sierra Nevada mountains, about 20 miles from the Caribbean coast, Gabriel García Márquez’s fictional world of Macondo lives on.
Continue reading...Coleman, known for his ample mustache, won a Golden Globe for The Slap Maxwell Story and also appeared in Boardwalk Empire
Dabney Coleman, the mustachioed character actor who specialized in smarmy villains like the chauvinist boss in 9 to 5 and the nasty TV director in Tootsie, has died. He was 92.
Coleman died on Thursday, his daughter, Quincy Coleman, told the Hollywood Reporter. No other details were immediately available.
Continue reading...Exclusive: FoI request reveals Arts Council updated guidance after discussing Gaza conflict with DCMS
Arts Council England (ACE) issued a warning that “political statements” could break funding agreements after discussions with the government about artists speaking out over the Israel-Gaza war, newly released documents suggest.
A freedom of information request made by the actors’ union Equity has revealed that the conflict was discussed in a meeting between ACE and the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) in December.
Continue reading...Speaking at Cannes, the director says Megalopolis, his reworking of ancient Rome’s Catiline conspiracy, has become ever more prescient
Megalopolis review – Coppola’s passion project is megabloated and megaboring
The US, whose founders tried to emulate the laws and governmental structures of the Roman republic, is headed for a similarly self-inflicted collapse, director Francis Ford Coppola has said at the premiere of his first film in more than a decade.
“What’s happening in America, in our republic, in our democracy, is exactly how Rome lost their republic thousands of years ago,” Coppola told a press conference at the Cannes film festival on Friday. “Our politics has taken us to the point where we might lose our republic.”
Continue reading...Big-name ballet dancers and rising choreographers have found a new home in the superclub where the after-party goes on until 5am
“It’s the easiest rider we’ve ever done,” says the Ministry of Sound’s Mahit Anam. “Normally it’s five bottles of Patrón, four bottles of vodka … ” And this time? Water, bananas and protein bars. It’s not your usual green room at the south London superclub, because this is not your usual show: the dancefloor is about to be taken over by professionals. Ballet Nights – a monthly production usually held in a Canary Wharf theatre and featuring the country’s top ballet stars and rising choreographers – is moving into clubland. So now amid the speaker stacks and DJ decks you’ll see Royal Ballet dancer Joshua Junker and work from Olivier award-winning choreographer James Cousins. It’s a whole different kind of podium dancing.
“Everything’s got too formulaic, too samey, and that’s why we want to do this stuff,” says Anam. “Pushing boundaries is something we should always be doing.” Ballet Nights was hatched by former Scottish Ballet soloist and choreographer Jamiel Devernay-Laurence in 2023. The idea was to give audiences an up-close view of big-name ballet dancers like Steven McRae and Matthew Ball as well as nurturing a stable of young artists. But he was itching to expand, and eager to attract younger audiences, people who are the same age as the dancers who perform. Devernay-Laurence had met with all sorts of venues – theatres, concert halls – and it was always a “let’s talk again in the future” situation. But when he walked into Ministry of Sound: “They had open arms, they were so excited. We walked out the same day with an agreement and a date.”
Ballet Nights is at Ministry of Sound, London, on 31 May
Continue reading...Adaptation of hit comedy quiz will begin airing on CNN on Saturday nights to coincide with presidential election
Arch, ironic and understated, Have I Got News for You is the quintessential British comedy quiz, but its creators are hoping a US version of the show can translate its particular brand of political humour across the Atlantic.
A US adaptation of the show will be broadcast by CNN in the autumn, to coincide with the presidential election. It will hit screens on Saturday nights – part of a double-bill with Bill Maher’s Real Time.
Continue reading...Exclusive: The director of The Seed of the Sacred Fig details how he discarded electronic devices and fled over the mountains on foot after authorities sentenced him to eight years in prison and flogging
Iranian director Mohammad Rasoulof escaped imminent imprisonment in Iran by discarding all trackable electronic devices and walking across a mountainous borderland on foot, the film-maker has told the Guardian in an exclusive interview.
But even though he has found shelter in Germany and is optimistic about attending next week’s Cannes premiere of the film that nearly saw him jailed for eight years, Rasoulof said he still expects to return to his home country “quite soon” and sit out his sentence.
Continue reading...Lebohang Kganye blends oral traditions, family photos and theatre in a ‘new and fresh way’ to trace personal history of apartheid era
The South African artist Lebohang Kganye has won the prestigious Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation prize for her work that uses large-scale cutouts and elements of set design to trace and depict her family history during the apartheid era.
The Johannesburg-based artist took home the £30,000 prize for her winning exhibition, which is on display at the Photographers’ Gallery in central London and is called Haufi nyana? I’ve come to take you home.
Continue reading...Livestream artwork with 2.4m-wide screen allowed people in both cities to see but not hear each other, leading to offensive conduct
Authorities in Dublin are to temporarily shut down the live video portal with New York because of unruly behaviour.
The city council said in a statement on Tuesday it would switch off the interactive webcam at 10pm Irish time while technicians try to tweak – or censor – a project that has brought delight and notoriety.
Continue reading...Musician who played sax solo on Young Americans and released a series of Grammy-winning albums dies from prostate cancer
David Sanborn, the Grammy-winning saxophonist whose expressive versatility across jazz and pop also made him a sought-after session player for tracks such as David Bowie’s Young Americans, has died aged 78.
A message on social media stated he died from “an extended battle with prostate cancer with complications. Mr Sanborn had been dealing with prostate cancer since 2018, but had been able to maintain his normal schedule of concerts until just recently. Indeed he already had concerts scheduled into 2025.”
Continue reading...Klein may be charged over alleged threats and face a fine if convicted, after a member of the production crew made a complaint to police
Joost Klein, the Netherlands’ Eurovision contestant who was disqualified from the competition just hours before the grand final, will probably be charged with making illegal threats, Swedish police have said.
The 26-year-old favourite to win was expelled from the competition in Malmö, unprecedented in the 68-year history of Eurovision, after a female member of the production crew made a complaint about an alleged “backstage incident” to Swedish police.
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