Category Archives: Festivals

How Brexit nearly scuppered the ‘festival of Brexit’

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Project hit by fall in labour supply and rise in costs, and investigation launched over low visitor numbers

For some, the whole project was supposed to be a celebration of Britain’s departure from the EU. Which means there is more than a little irony in the fact a main concern of the “festival of Brexit” organisers was the impact of leaving itself.

Disruption to the supply of workers and materials, as well as increased costs, emerged as one of the risks overshadowing the project, according to records.

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Iran bans director Mani Haghighi from attending London film festival

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The Subtraction director had his passport confiscated by Iranian authorities and was prevented from boarding his flight to the UK, allegedly with no reason given

Iranian film-maker Mani Haghighi has been banned from leaving the country and had his passport confiscated after attempting to travel to London, where his latest film Subtraction is screening at the London film festival.

In a video statement, Haghighi said: “I was prevented by the Iranian authorities from boarding my flight to London on Friday. They gave me no reasonable explanation for this utterly rude behaviour.”

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Spielberg’s The Fabelmans wins Toronto film festival People’s Choice award

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Director’s most autobiographical film to date picks up audience prize generally seen as indicator of awards success to come

Steven Spielberg’s new film The Fabelmans has won the Toronto international film festival’s People’s Choice award, long regarded in the film industry as a key indicator of awards success over the next few months.

The Fabelmans, directed by Spielberg and co-written with Angels in America playwright Tony Kushner, has been hailed as Spielberg’s most autobiographical film and has won generally admiring reviews. The story of a teenage boy coping with his parents’ disintegrating marriage in the 60s midwest, the Guardian described it as a “rare insight into the world’s most famous director who has usually kept us at arm’s length”.

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Literary festival cancelled due to cost of living crisis

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Ways With Words, the organisers of Words by the Water in Keswick, say low ticket sales mean it is not viable to run next year’s event

Ways With Words, which runs literary festivals in the Lake District, Suffolk and Devon, has cancelled its forthcoming festival, saying it is not “currently viable” because of the UK’s cost of living crisis.

The organisation had been due to put on Words by the Water, a 10-day event in Keswick, in March 2023. But after experiencing low ticket sales for its festival in Dartington, Devon, in July this year, the decision was made to cancel the Lake District gathering and cease planning events for the foreseeable future.

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‘Festival of Brexit’ label puts visitors off Unboxed project

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Investigation reveals the £120m creative event series has attracted fraction of target numbers

The head of the £120m Unboxed, an ongoing project aimed at celebrating UK creativity, has conceded the scheme has been dogged by being nicknamed the “Festival of Brexit” after it attracted a fraction of the target visitor numbers.

Ministers had hoped that the festival would attract 66 million people, but with just over two more months to go, four of the events have so far only drawn 238,000 visitors, according to official figures.

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Adelaide festival to stage Verdi’s Requiem with a cast of hundreds – and a star choreographer

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After Covid thwarted two attempts to bring out Christian Spuck’s acclaimed Messa da Requiem, the festival has finally announced it as next year’s centrepiece

For Adelaide festival’s 2023 opera centrepiece a cast of almost 200 singers, dancers and musicians will take the stage under the direction of one of the world’s most celebrated choreographers.

Dance will be foregrounded in Messa da Requiem: the celebrated production of Giuseppe Verdi’s masterpiece Requiem by the German choreographer Christian Spuck, which debuted in Zurich in 2016.

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Edinburgh notebook: ‘Rik Mayall was like Bad Santa to us’

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Stand-up comic Red Richardson on his pedigree comedy childhood

Driving Rik Mayall around would be entertaining work for anyone, but for the young Red Richardson, the job he had in his 20s was the continuation of a childhood bond.

Mayall, who died suddenly in 2014 at the age of 56, was a near neighbour in South Devon, but he was also Richardson’s father’s close friend.

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Lars von Trier diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease

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Danish director, who won Palme d’Or for Dancer in the Dark, said to be ‘in good spirits’

Lars von Trier, the acclaimed and controversial Danish director, has been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, his production company has announced.

In a statement released on Monday, Zentropa – which von Trier co-founded in 1992 with producer Peter Aalbæk Jensen – said the director is in “good spirits and is being treated for his symptoms” while he completes the upcoming final season of his TV trilogy series.

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Post-Brexit visa rules a ‘disaster’ for arts, says Edinburgh festival director

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Fergus Linehan calls for visa-free travel for British artists to solve logistical problems of touring

The outgoing director of the Edinburgh festival has called for the UK’s visa and exports rules to be greatly simplified to allow musicians and artists to travel overseas far more smoothly.

Fergus Linehan, who directs his last international festival next month, said the UK’s post-Brexit visa rules had been a “disaster” for the arts and for artists by stifling collaboration and making it harder for British artists to tour abroad.

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‘The spirit of Love Parade’: organisers to bring techno event home to Berlin

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Politics, electronic music and 25,000 people expected at Rave the Planet Parade this weekend, 12 years after fatal Duisburg crush

Neon bodypaint, string vests and no-nonsense four-to-the-floor beats will return to the streets of Berlin this weekend as the legendary Love Parade techno event makes a comeback in the German capital after a hiatus of more than 15 years.

Saturday’s daytime outdoor event carries a new name – the Rave the Planet Parade – but is being organised by some of the same people who put together the first Love Parade on the eve of the fall of the Berlin Wall.

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Paul McCartney’s Glastonbury show hailed as ‘phenomenal’

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Ex-Beatle’s gig seen by many in huge festival crowd as ‘something to tell your grandkids about’

Paul McCartney’s history-making Glastonbury set was hailed as one of the greatest headline performances of this generation as a crowd of more than 100,000 people gathered at the festival’s famous Pyramid stage to watch him play.

He was joined on stage by Bruce Springsteen and Foo Fighters’ Dave Grohl – and even sang a duet with his old bandmate John Lennon, using special effects pioneered by the Lord of the Rings director Peter Jackson.

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Sir Paul McCartney plays surprise pre-Glastonbury gig in Frome

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Set at Cheese and Grain sold out in under an hour after being announced on Thursday night

Sir Paul McCartney delivered a surprise performance the night before his Glastonbury festival headline set, which had caused traffic congestion as fans tried to buy a coveted ticket.

The impromptu gig at the Cheese and Grain entertainment venue in Frome, Somerset, was announced on Thursday evening and sold out in under an hour.

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Lil Wayne will not perform at UK festival after Home Office refused entry

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Grammy-award winning US rapper will no longer headline Strawberries & Creem festival in Cambridge

Lil Wayne will no longer headline at Strawberries & Creem festival in Cambridge after he was banned from entering the UK at the last minute, event organisers have said.

The Grammy-award winning American rapper, 39, will not perform on Saturday in what was believed to be his first UK show in 14 years after he had his visa application refused.

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Bernardine Evaristo fears publishers may lose interest in black authors

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Diversity in book industry must be sustained, and start at the top, Booker prize-winning author tells Hay festival

The Booker prize-winning author Bernardine Evaristo says she fears that publishers’ interest in black authors may be only a “trend or fashion” that could wane unless the business becomes more diverse.

Evaristo, who was the first black woman to win the literary prize for her novel Girl, Woman, Other in 2019, said that the Black Lives Matter movement and the murder of George Floyd in 2020 “really did shake the industry to the core” and had marked a turning point in previously “excluded” authors getting book deals.

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Jacqueline Wilson: my mother slept with a gun under her pillow

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Children’s author says she told her elderly mother to get rid of it as she was terrified of being mistakenly shot

The children’s author Dame Jacqueline Wilson has said her elderly mother slept with a gun beneath her pillow.

Wilson, creator of the Tracy Beaker series, told an audience at the Hay festival in Wales that she was daughter of a character more colourful than any she had written – and that she was terrified her mother might shoot her by accident, and persuaded her to get rid of it.

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Monica Ali ‘terrified’ of writing sex scenes in new novel

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Brick Lane author says fear of winning Bad Sex award loomed over writing of latest book, Love Marriage

The Brick Lane author Monica Ali has said she was “terrified” to write the sex scenes in her most recent novel, Love Marriage, with the fear of being nominated for the Bad Sex awards looming over her as she wrote.

In an event at the Hay festival in Wales, the 54-year-old writer told the audience: “There’s all sorts of pitfalls to writing sex scenes – you might end up using words like ‘throbbing’, ‘thrusting’, ‘member’”.

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‘The US is completely insane’: David Cronenberg on Roe v Wade at Cannes film festival

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The Canadian director made the comments at a press conference for his latest body horror film Crimes of the Future

David Cronenberg, director of Crash, The Naked Lunch and A History of Violence, has said that “the US is completely insane”.

Speaking to the press at the Cannes film festival premiere of his new film Crimes of the Future, Cronenberg referred specifically to attempts to overturn Roe v Wade. “In Canada … we think everyone in the US is completely insane. I think the US has gone completely bananas, and I can’t believe what the elected officials are saying, not just about Roe v Wade, so it is strange times.”

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Armageddon Time: film featuring Trump family is attack on capitalism, says maker

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New movie set in 80s US and starring Succession star Jeremy Strong with Jessica Chastain as Donald Trump’s sister, traces fault lines of political and social division back to Reagan era

A new film set in 1980s New York, in which Donald Trump’s property mogul father, Fred, and high-achieving lawyer sister Maryanne appear as characters is a direct attack on late-stage capitalism, according to its principal cast and director.

Armageddon Time, which is premiering at the Cannes film festival and stars Succession’s Jeremy Strong alongside Oscar-winner Jessica Chastain as Maryanne Trump, in a cameo, is set during the run-up to the election of Ronald Reagan as president and examines the layers of privilege that determine the future of children attending different schools in the same city.

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Solar system recreated in Derry sculpture trail

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Our Place in Space is part of £120m government-backed Unboxed festival spanning UK over coming months

A glowing silicone sun measuring 2.3 metres in diameter and a pinhead-size Pluto have been brought down to earth in an extraordinary scale model of the solar system aimed at giving the public a true sense of the huge size of space.

The six-mile (10km) riverside sculpture trail opens in Derry on Friday as part of Unboxed, the £120m government-backed celebration of creativity that spans the UK over the coming months.

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Coachella 2022: big stars head to the desert with safety concerns looming

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After a two-year pause, Harry Styles, Billie Eilish and The Weeknd will be headlining at a festival with no Covid-19 restrictions

Harry Styles, Billie Eilish and The Weeknd are headed to Coachella this weekend for the first edition of the mega-festival in three years.

The California-based festival, which takes place over two weekends, is expected to draw more than 125,000 people a day. In February, the festival announced that there would be no rules regarding mask-wearing, testing and vaccination proof “in accordance with local guidelines”.

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