Category Archives: Culture

Ambiguous Japanese eco-drama wins London film festival top prize

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Evil Does Not Exist, directed by Ryusuke Hamaguchi, is about community’s fight against ‘glamping’ development

A Japanese eco-drama about a lakeside community’s resistance to a corporate “glamping” development in their beautiful unspoilt village has won the top prize at the London film festival.

Evil Does Not Exist, directed by Ryusuke Hamaguchi, tells the story of a community fighting to preserve its principles and the integrity of the natural world. They are up against a Tokyo company that has bought up swathes of nearby land, intending to turn it into a destination for well-off city tourists.

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How Velázquez’s slave became a renowned artist in his own right

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Juan de Pareja’s story sheds light on the role of slavery in creating the great works of Spain’s golden age

The portrait, showing a man of African descent gazing frankly towards the artist, set the art world abuzz when it was revealed by Diego Velázquez in 1650.

The painting cemented the artist’s stratospheric rise, but the spotlight has been recently cast on the extraordinary trajectory of the man who is the subject of the portrait, Juan de Pareja, who went from being enslaved in Velázquez’s studio for more than two decades to becoming a successful artist in his own right.

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Reader, they lived there: campaign to save Brontës’ Bradford birthplace as it goes on sale

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A crowdfunding drive led by TV presenter Christa Ackroyd aims to make the first home of the literary siblings a tourist destination and source of inspiration

Around a million visitors a year beat a path to Haworth, the small West Yorkshire town nestling in the windy moors of the Worth Valley – mainly to see the home of the Brontë sisters.

The house that writers Charlotte, Anne and Emily shared with their father, church minister Patrick, and their wayward brother Branwell is a major tourist attraction. Visitors wander around the parsonage and surrounding cobbled streets to soak up the atmosphere of just how the Brontës lived two centuries ago.

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Michael Caine confirms his retirement at the age of 90

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Actor brings seven-decade career to close, saying he wants to go out on a high note after his last role in The Great Escaper

Michael Caine has confirmed his retirement at the age of 90, drawing to a close a glittering career in which he won two Oscars.

After his comments last month that he was “sort of retired”, Caine made it official, telling the BBC’s Today programme: “I keep saying I’m going to retire. Well I am now.

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Ireland’s embrace of Zombie song at Rugby World Cup stirs debate over lyrics

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Fans seen singing the Cranberries’ hit in stadiums but some Irish republicans are unhappy at revival

Twenty years after a lethal IRA bomb inspired its stark, chilling lyrics, the Cranberries’ song Zombie has experienced an unlikely rebirth as a Rugby World Cup anthem.

Ireland fans have belted out its chorus in stadiums across France and hope to do so again on Saturday after a quarter-final tie against New Zealand at the Stade de France in Paris.

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Europe’s oldest student newspaper saved from closure

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More than £3,000 raised to keep the Student – founded in 1886 by Robert Louis Stevenson at Edinburgh University – going

The oldest student newspaper in Europe has been saved from closure after its volunteer staff raised more than £3,000 in emergency crowdfunding.

A free newspaper, the Student was founded at the University of Edinburgh in 1887 by the novelist Robert Louis Stevenson, the author of Treasure Island and Kidnapped, who served as its first arts editor.

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Pop group Easy Life forced to change band name amid dispute with easyJet owner

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The group have decided not to defend lawsuit due to financial burden, after easyGroup labelled the Leicester-formed band a ‘brand thief’

British pop group Easy Life have been forced to change their name after easyGroup, the parent company of easyJet, filed a lawsuit claiming their name infringed on a trademark.

The band will not defend the high court lawsuit, saying the financial burden of doing so would be too high. They have not announced a new name.

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‘Just joy’: Greta Gerwig discusses reaction to Barbie at London film festival

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Director recalls enjoyment of making highest-grossing film of the year and says she was ‘so moved’ by response

Greta Gerwig has spoken of her “thrill” at the “incredible reaction” to Barbie, her existential comedy and the runaway hit film of the year.

Talking to Succession and Peep Show co-creator Jesse Armstrong at an audience during the London film festival at the BFI Southbank, Gerwig, 40, recalled standing covertly at the back of cinemas in New York during the film’s opening weekend, asking the projectors to “turn up the volume” and being “so moved” by the warmth of audience response.

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Black British films as valuable as other UK and European genres, says academic

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Clive Nwonka says genre should stand with traditions such as the French new wave and British social realism

The black British urban genre should be as valuable to British film culture and academia as the French new wave and British social realism, a leading academic has said.

Clive Nwonka, an associate professor of film, culture and society at UCL, began his academic research in 2010, during a critically important era of black representation in British film and TV.

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Sweden’s ‘queen of Noir’ Camilla Läckberg accused of using a ghostwriter

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Crime novelist has been forced to deny claims that she tricked readers into buying books she didn’t write herself

It is a gripping detective story typical of the queen of Nordic noir, leaving fans pondering the ethics of relationships and the dirty secrets of people with power and influence.

But for once, bestselling crime novelist Camilla Läckberg is not the author of this particular literary whodunnit, but its protagonist.

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Prado show examines how images helped fuel centuries of antisemitism in Spain

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A new exhibition chronicles the shifting lenses through which Spain’s Catholics saw the country’s Jewish population

The jet, horn, silver and coral amulets placed around the neck of a three-year-old boy in Tàrrega almost seven centuries ago offered no protection against the crowds who massacred him and hundreds of other Jews in the Catalan town in 1348.

Some of the other pieces in a new exhibition at Madrid’s Prado museum that looks at how images were used to shape and define relationships between Jews and Christians in medieval Spain may have been more effective in warding off the escalating antisemitic hatred.

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Terence Davies, award-winning film-maker, dies at 77

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The revered director and lyrical chronicler of working-class life in Distant Voices, Still Lives, died peacefully at home after a short illness

• Peter Bradshaw appreciation

• A life in pictures

Terence Davies, the film-maker regularly hailed by critics as among Britain’s greatest, has died aged 77.

The Liverpool-born director, perhaps best known for his semi-autobiographical study of working-class family life Distant Voices, Still Lives, starring Pete Postlethwaite, was working on a new project at the time of his illness and only two years ago released Benediction, starring Jack Lowden in the role of the war poet Siegfried Sassoon.

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Martin Scorsese tells young film-makers to embrace new tech for ‘serious’ work

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Director in London for Killers of the Flower Moon premiere says it is time to ‘rethink what you want to say and how you want to say it’

Martin Scorsese has urged young film-makers to use new technology for “serious” work, as he emphasised the importance of cinema over content.

Speaking at a Screen Talk at the BFI London film festival hosted by the British film-maker Edgar Wright, Scorsese – arguably America’s highest status film director – said the industry’s “period of reinventing” didn’t have to spell the end of auteur-led film-making.

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American tourist arrested for damaging Roman statues at Israel Museum

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Vandalism stirs concern about safety of collections amid rise in attacks on cultural heritage in Jerusalem

Israeli police have arrested an American tourist at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem after he hurled works of art to the floor, defacing two second-century Roman statues.

The vandalism late on Thursday raised questions about the safety of the priceless collections and stirred concern about a rise in attacks on cultural heritage in Jerusalem.

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Jailed Iranian activist Narges Mohammadi wins Nobel peace prize

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Mohammadi wins prize for her fight against oppression of women in Iran and to promote human rights for all

Narges Mohammadi, the most prominent of Iran’s jailed women’s rights advocates, has vowed to stay in the country and continue her activism after winning the 2023 Nobel peace prize.

“I will never stop striving for the realisation of democracy, freedom and equality,” she said in a prewritten statement released after the announcement. “Surely, the Nobel peace prize will make me more resilient, determined, hopeful and enthusiastic on this path, and it will accelerate my pace.”

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‘Dangerous precedent’: fears over plans for Calanais stones access fee

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Land access groups worry it will lead to charges at other sites, while pagans are alarmed about restrictions on worship

For generations walkers, pagans and artists have freely roamed around the standing stones at Calanais on Lewis, drawn by the site’s monumental scale, its coastal views and the spiritual impact of the rising sun and moon there.

But there are growing fears that proposals by Historic Environment Scotland (HES) to introduce an admissions charge and control access to the neolithic site for the first time, could have a significant impact on those freedoms.

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‘Choose London’: Sadiq Khan steps up efforts to lure EU citizens post-Brexit

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Exclusive: Mayor vows to make capital a better place to live to offset ‘shockwaves’ from EU departure

The mayor of London has urged EU citizens to “choose London” over other European cities, promising to make the UK capital a better place to live and work despite Brexit.

Sadiq Khan told the Guardian he had redoubled his efforts to attract EU citizens since the UK left the bloc, notwithstanding new barriers such as visa requirements.

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Chewing gum artist makes plea to save Millennium Bridge works

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Ben Wilson told most of his art on discarded gum to be removed during engineering and cleaning work

An artist who paints tiny pictures on discarded chewing gum has pleaded for his works to be saved after being told most of them will be removed from the Millennium Bridge in London as part of engineering work.

Ben Wilson, nicknamed “the chewing gum man”, has been painting on pieces of chewing gum trodden into the bridge since 2013.

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More diverse Big Brother returns to UK after five-year absence

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Exclusive: reality TV show will reflect societal changes but keep ‘social experiment’ format

A more “aspirational” house and housemates who represent different sections of society and will engage in the debates of modern Britain are among the changes as Big Brother goes “back to basics” when it returns to British TV on Sunday.

At a time when division is exacerbated by culture wars and social media echo chambers, the producers have taken the format back to its social experiment roots by narrowing down 30,000 applications to just 16 housemates who reflect the “changes in society” since the reality show was axed five years ago by Channel 5.

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Boards trodden by Shakespeare found under floor of Norfolk guildhall

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Oak floorboards discovered at St George’s Guildhall, King’s Lynn, believed to be only surviving stage from Shakespeare’s time

Boards trodden by the Bard have been discovered under layers of flooring at England’s oldest medieval guildhall as it undergoes a big refurbishment.

The 600-year-old oak floorboards are believed to be the only surviving stage from William Shakespeare’s time.

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