Category Archives: Festivals

‘I made it as if this was the end of my life’: Scorsese on Raging Bull at 40

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At a Tribeca film festival event, the director and his star Robert De Niro discussed the legacy of the greatest boxing movie ever made

In Martin Scorsese’s 1980 magnum opus, Raging Bull, the self-destructive boxer Jake LaMotta goes from the greatest to a washed-up parody of himself, clinging to his memories of the good ol’ days. For the director and star Robert De Niro, looking back on the film from the present day could have been tempting fate, a couple of ageing men reminiscing about their younger years via a movie illustrating the hazards of just that.

At this year’s closing night for De Niro’s own Tribeca film festival, during an hour-long pre-recorded conversation that preceded the evening’s screening, there was a slight hint of the rueful in the way he and dear pal “Marty” discussed the experience with emcee Leonardo DiCaprio. “Our way of making movies went down,” Scorsese proclaimed, citing the massive financial failure of the pricy Heaven’s Gate that same year as a sign that the party was over for creative talents in search of studio carte blanche. “The kind of thing we were doing was too much trouble for, ah, what they would reap from it.” De Niro clarified: “Money.”

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Jenni Olson: ‘I remember walking out of the movie theatre like, “Yeah, I’m a cowboy!”’

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How did a little girl who loved Westerns grow up into an icon of queer cinema? As she wins a Teddy award, the filmmaker talks about a life devoted to the movies

When Jenni Olson accepts the Berlin film festival’s coveted Teddy award this month – for “embodying, living and creating queer culture” – she will join the ranks of past recipients including John Hurt, Joe Dallesandro and Tilda Swinton. “Me and Tilda, you know?” laughs the 58-year-old as she winces in the morning sunlight which is streaming into her home in Berkeley, California. With her youthful features, crisply side-parted hair and apostrophe-shaped eyes, she might have been drawn by Charles M Schulz.

“When I started my little gay film series at the University of Minnesota in 1987,” she says, “I never could’ve imagined that one of the largest film festivals in the world would recognise my work.” Along the way, she has been co-director of the San Francisco international lesbian and gay film festival as well as an influential curator, critic and archivist. She has taken her compilations of film trailers – including Homo Promo, Jodie Promo (Foster, that is) and the Jewish-themed Trailers Schmailers – to festivals around the world. Her vast collection of LGBT-themed film prints, along with the promotional materials that featured in her near-exhaustive collection The Queer Movie Poster Book, was acquired by Harvard last summer.

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Edinburgh festival fringe threatened by Covid rules, says organiser

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CEO calls on Scottish ministers to replace 2-metre rule with 1 metre to secure future of world’s largest arts festival

The survival of the Edinburgh festival fringe is at stake unless social distancing rules for venues are relaxed within a fortnight, its organiser has said.

Shona McCarthy, the chief executive of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe Society, called on ministers to replace the 2-metre rule with the 1-metre distance used in hospitality in order to help secure the future of the world’s largest arts festival.

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Help, it’s 1,000 trillion degrees in here! The Big Bang artwork that makes scientists cry

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What would it have been like to be inside the Big Bang? We meet the ultra-hi-tech art duo who are using light, sound and sub-atomic astro data to recreate the biggest explosion ever

‘Step into the heart of the Big Bang,” says the advert for Halo, a walk-in, 360-degree, audiovisual installation about to open in Brighton. Come off it, I want to retort. You couldn’t “step” into the Big Bang without first travelling 13.8 billion years back in time and then being extremely miniaturised. After all, the universe was, according to one estimate, just 17cm in diameter at its inception.

What’s more, it was dark inside the Big Bang. In fact, there was no light at all. True, if you stuck around for 380,000 years, according to Nasa, you might have been able to see something because that was when free electrons met up with nuclei and created neutral atoms that would have allowed light to pass through. But who has 380,000 years to hang around waiting in the dark?

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‘Sad and so unfair’: Palestinian Americans celebrate a painful Eid

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The violence in Gaza and Jerusalem has made the conclusion to the Muslim holy month a somber event for many

The sound of the call to prayer resonated through Astoria Park in Queens, New York, on an Eid that saw sunny weather and an opportunity for human connection after a year spent apart during the pandemic.

The conclusion to the Muslim holy month of Ramadan is usually marked with a celebratory breakfast, new clothes, and a chorus of “Eid Mubaraks” and “Alhamdulillahs.”

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Eid al-Fitr celebrations around the world – in pictures

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Around the world, Eid al-Fitr celebrations have been taking place in another unprecedented year. With the uneven distribution of Covid-19 vaccines, Muslims in countries like the US and UK have been able to gather en masse for the first time in over a year and celebrate the end of Ramadan. Meanwhile, across Asia, some ceremonies have been more muted and somber, as families continue to lose members to the virus.

Adding to the complex emotions amid this year’s celebration, Muslim communities have been demonstrating solidarity with those affected by the crisis in Gaza, where Israeli strikes have killed dozens of people, including many children. As millions share traditional feasts after a month of fasting, Eid will continue through the evening, and often through the week

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Puppet of refugee girl to ‘walk’ across Europe along 12-week arts festival trail

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Three teams of four puppeteers will accompany Little Amal from Turkey to Manchester to celebrate refugees

A giant puppet of a nine-year-old Syrian refugee girl is to “walk” from Turkey to the UK through villages, towns and cities for one of the most ambitious and complex public artworks ever attempted.

The Walk project was meant to have taken place between April and July but was delayed by the pandemic. Now the 5,000 mile (8,000km) journey of Little Amal, from Gaziantep, near the Turkish-Syrian border, to Manchester, will take place over 12 weeks from 27 July.

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Ian Brown pulls out of music festival over Covid vaccination row

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Brown, a noted Covid sceptic, has withdrawn from the Neighbourhood Weekender festival in Warrington in September

Ian Brown has pulled out of headlining the Neighbourhood Weekender festival in Warrington this September after claiming that all attendees require proof of vaccination.

Brown is a noted Covid sceptic, frequently using his Twitter account to spread disinformation about the virus and protections against it. “I refuse to accept vaccination proof as condition of entry,” he tweeted yesterday.

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Pleasure review – bold, explicit and ambitious LA porn drama

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In Swedish film-maker Ninja Thyberg’s strong debut, a young woman discovers a difficult, male-dominated industry as she strives for agency

The observational eye of Pleasure, an ambitious Sundance debut by the Swedish film-maker Ninja Thyberg, is so transactional, at once unsparing and recessive, that one might mistake the first 10 minutes of this drama on the American adult film business for a documentary. “Business or pleasure?” the customs agent asks 19-year-old Swedish visitor Bella Cherry as she enters the country with a dream to become a porn star. She answers, vacantly, “Pleasure,” but the film’s opening moments are all business: a full frontal, zoomed-in shot of Bella’s delicate balancing act in the shower as she shaves her vulva for a shoot; Bella affirming her birthdate (1999), agreed-upon pay ($900 for playing innocent virgin in girl-guy porn), and consent to perform a sexually explicit act for a contract; the bright lighting of professional shoots; crew-members’ playful teasing when Bella, a first-time performer, is confused by the use of a douche.

Related: Judas and the Black Messiah review – electric Black Panthers drama

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Flee review – remarkable refugee story told with heart and audacity

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A thrilling documentary made with a blend of animation and archive footage tells an immensely powerful tale of a gay Afghan survivor

In what’s proving to be a rather sub-par Sundance (an understandable blip given the unusual nature of this year’s virtual festival), it’s a genuine thrill to encounter a film as exciting and immediate as Flee, a much-needed jolt of energy now reverberating on laptop screens across the country. Even in a traditional year, it’s the kind of audacious and uniquely told story that would have attendees excitedly buzzing around Park City, urging others to seek out, and despite the fractured nature of this year’s edition, a swell of digital support has helped it nab a seven-figure deal with Neon (helped also perhaps by its star producers Riz Ahmed and Nikolaj Coster-Waldau), this year’s first big sale, a well-earned reward for what’s likely to be the best film of the festival.

Related: Passing review – Rebecca Hall's elegant but inert directorial debut

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Swedish nurse to be sole attendee of film festival on remote island

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Lisa Enroth was chosen from 12,000 applicants to be Gothenburg film festival’s castaway on Pater Noster

Scandinavia’s biggest film festival is going ahead this year despite the coronavirus pandemic, but will be hosted on an isolated island and admit only one attendee – a healthcare worker, who has been selected from 12,000 applicants.

Lisa Enroth, a Swedish nurse and film fan, was chosen to be the 2021 Gothenburg film festival’s castaway who will spend a week on the remote island of Pater Noster watching film after film.

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No true ‘city of culture’ should dishonour the bold ideals of its postwar rebirth

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Plans for the centre of Coventry claim to offer a sense of place, but ignore its pioneering mid-century reconstruction

Coventry is UK City of Culture 2021, a title that focuses attention on its contribution to the cultural life of the nation: 1980s two-tone music, the legend of Lady Godiva, and its role in the development of the bicycle and car industries. And, high on this list, the fact that it was the pre-eminent example of reconstruction after wartime bombing.

Among the most devastated cities, Coventry was also one of the most determined and thoughtful in its reconstruction. This was partly expressed by its new cathedral, which brought together leading art and architecture, and connected movingly with the ruins of its predecessor. It was also expressed by the city centre, rebuilt as a series of human-scaled, pedestrian-friendly precincts. Here, too, the idea was for art and architecture to work together.

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Festivals, holidays, Euro 2020… will summer’s big events still go ahead?

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Burgeoning hopes for a normal sporting and cultural calendar are now in question again as infections increase

As Covid-19 cases rise across the world, hopes that life could get back to some semblance of normality by summer are fading. What chance do we have of going to a festival, flying off for a holiday or attending a major sporting event?

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Kim Ki-duk: punk-Buddhist shock, violence – and hypnotic beauty too

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The South Korean director, who has died of Covid, was at the forefront of a new wave of uncompromising cinema

Of all the film-makers of what might loosely be called the new Asian wave of the 21st century, perhaps the most challenging and mysterious – and probably the most garlanded on the European festival circuit – was South Korean director Kim Ki-duk. He made movies which were shocking, scabrous and violent - yet also often hauntingly sad and plangently beautiful and sometimes just plain weird. But they were strangely hypnotic. In 2011, I was on the Cannes Un Certain Regard jury which gave the top prize to his opaque docufictional piece Arirang, and though I struggle a bit now to recapture the mood of certainty that led us to that decision, there is no doubt about that Kim’s work had a commanding effect.

In fact, Kim himself might be a more prominent figure himself were it not that he was involved in the #MeToo controversy – three actors accused him of sexual assault which resulted in a fine for the director and inconclusive recrimination in the civil courts.

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Land of shuang bao tai: twins in Yunnan province – a photo essay

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Shuang bao tai 双胞胎 is the Chinese word for twin. Following on from Land of Ibeji, Sanne de Wilde and Bénédicte Kurzen travel to Mojiang in Yunnan for the second chapter of their project about the mythology of twinhood. The area has an exceptionally high percentage of twins, celebrated in its annual tropic of cancer twin festival

The first chapter of this project was called Land Of Ibeji. West Africa, and specifically Yorubaland, has 10 times more twins than any other region in the world. Ibeji, meaning “double birth” and “the inseparable two” in Yoruba stands for the ultimate harmony between two people. “Shuang bao tai”, 双胞胎 is the Chinese word for twin, which translates as: 双 double 胞 womb 胎 embryo.

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‘He’ll make your head explode’: sax stars on the genius and tragedy of Charlie Parker

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He was nicknamed Bird and he soared in his music – if not in his life. For the centenary of the saxophonist who redefined jazz, today’s players reveal how his dizzying speed and spirituality changed their lives

Outside jazz circles, Charlie Parker might not be a household name like Miles Davis or Louis Armstrong, but the saxophonist, who died of cirrhosis aged 34 after struggling with addictions to heroin and alcohol, was one of music’s true innovators. By inventing the dizzyingly fast style known as bebop, Parker turned jazz from dance music into something intensely intellectual and spiritual. As the London jazz festival celebrates his centenary with a tribute, today’s jazz stars talk about the shattering impact of the man nicknamed Bird.

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