Israel has set a curfew to limit festivities for the Jewish holiday when revellers don costumes and party into the night. Similarly muted celebrations have taken place around the world
Continue reading...Category Archives: Festivals
New Orleans houses become Mardi Gras floats in Covid era – in pictures
Houses are being decorated as floats because the pandemic has resulted in the cancellation of the customary parades during the carnival season
Continue reading...Pleasure review – bold, explicit and ambitious LA porn drama
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
Continue reading...Flee review – remarkable refugee story told with heart and audacity
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
Continue reading...Swedish nurse to be sole attendee of film festival on remote island
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.
Continue reading...No true ‘city of culture’ should dishonour the bold ideals of its postwar rebirth
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.
Continue reading...Festivals, holidays, Euro 2020… will summer’s big events still go ahead?
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?
Continue reading...Kim Ki-duk: punk-Buddhist shock, violence – and hypnotic beauty too
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.
Continue reading...Land of shuang bao tai: twins in Yunnan province – a photo essay
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.
Continue reading...‘He’ll make your head explode’: sax stars on the genius and tragedy of Charlie Parker
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.
Continue reading...‘We have lost a limb’: Azu Nwagbogu, the visionary curator bringing African art home
From helping photographers capture the Nigerian protests to exhibiting during a pandemic, the director of LagosPhoto festival has had his work cut out. Now he wants to fight ‘afro-pessimism’ and the posturing around Black Lives Matter
When I first spoke to Azu Nwagbogu, the recent protests against police brutality in his native Nigeria had just entered their second week. The curator was upbeat, describing them as “an incredible awakening”. A week later, when we made contact again, he sounded more sombre, but no less defiant, following the fatal police shootings of at least 12 protesters at the Lekki toll gate in Lagos, the main gathering point for the daily demonstrations.
“This protest is not about ‘the poor masses’,” he tells me. “My sister, who is a medical doctor and a consultant anaesthetist, was active in the protests. Everyone who isn’t in government has had enough. The genie has been let out of the bottle and it won’t go back in without the wishes of the people being fulfilled.”
Continue reading...‘We are meant to gather’: organisers of global dance festival refuse to cancel – or give refunds
Ticket holders are angry that organisers insist the Global Eclipse festival will go ahead in Argentina, despite the government there banning international tourists
Thousands of people from around the world partying for 10 days in the middle of the Argentinian wilderness sounds like an ambitious endeavour even before Covid-19. But a global pandemic has done little to sway organisers of the Global Eclipse –Patagonia Gathering, who are determined to charge ahead and refusing to refund ticket holders.
Despite Argentina nearing 1 million Covid-19 cases and authorities currently refusing to let international tourists into the country, the electronic dance music (EDM) trance festival is still scheduled for December 2020.
Continue reading...Steve McQueen: ‘Our Marlon Brandos are on building sites, or driving buses’
The director’s new Small Axe series kicks off with the landmark 1971 trial of the Mangrove Nine. It’s his aim to fill these gaps in British history, he says, and to open the industry to other black film-makers
Photographer Misan Harriman is gently cajoling actor Shaun Parkes as the sun burns through the morning cloud above St Michael’s church in Ladbroke Grove, west London. “Look at me as if you’re searching for redemption,” he says, as Parkes looks down the lens. “But it’s redemption for something you haven’t even done.” Parkes, who rose to prominence as a raver in Human Traffic but now has flecks of grey in his beard, doesn’t ask for more clarity; he simply flashes a look at the camera and then slowly changes pose.
Today Parkes and Harriman, who recently shot Vogue’s “Activism Now” September issue, along with portraits of Black Lives Matter protesters, are revisiting the west London area that is the setting of Steve McQueen’s new film, Mangrove. It’s a glorious September morning and, despite the Covid-19 restrictions, the cafes are busy and the flower shops open. It’s hard to imagine that 50 years earlier, a few streets away, there was a pitched battle between the police and protesters that would help change the way Britain thought about race. Parkes plays Frank Crichlow, the real-life figure at the heart of McQueen’s film, which centres on Notting Hill’s Mangrove restaurant and nine West Indians who fought police harassment and then a court case. The look of redemption that Harriman is searching for is something Crichlow and the Mangrove Nine earned the hard way.
Continue reading...Frances McDormand starrer Nomadland wins the Golden Lion at Venice film festival
Drama featuring McDormand as a retiree forced on the road after the 2008 recession takes top honours on the Lido, while Vanessa Kirby is named best actress
Chloe Zhao’s Nomadland, a recession-era road trip drama starring Frances McDormand, won the Golden Lion for best film on Saturday at a slimmed-down Venice film festival, which was held against the backdrop of the coronavirus pandemic.
Zhao and McDormand appeared by video from the United States to accept the award, as en virus-related travel restrictions made reaching the Lido in the Italian lagoon city difficult if not impossible for many Hollywood filmmakers and actors.
Continue reading...Sun Children review – Iranian street kids strike gold
Majid Majidi’s cast of young toughs digging for treasure under a school deliver a heart-rending story with unexpected depth of emotion
Sun Children, by the Iranian director Majid Majidi, gives us a prison-break drama that is escaping to nowhere, and a knockabout school comedy gone horribly wrong. The acting is broad, the plot gears often creak, but it has guts and heart and a grubby, street-smart charisma. It’s one of the finest films playing in this year’s Venice competition.
Dedicated to “the 152m children forced into child labour”, this casts 12-year-old Roohollah Zamani as Ali, the pint-sized boss of a gang of thieves, a miniature wheel inside a much bigger machine, working for an unnamed local crime boss who skulks on the rooftop amid his pigeon coops. The boss wants Ali to retrieve a hoard of unspecified treasure, which is either buried in the local graveyard or in the drainage pipe that runs beside it. And the only way he can do it is to go back to school.
Continue reading...Greta Thunberg says Venice documentary shows her real self
Global climate activist pleased with film’s portrayal of her as a ‘shy nerd’
A documentary following Greta Thunberg and her journey from Swedish schoolgirl to global climate activist accurately portrays her as a “shy nerd”, the teenager said as the film premiered at the Venice film festival.
Director Nathan Grossman recorded Thunberg’s everyday life for a year, chronicling her rise to fame from the beginning of her school strike outside the Swedish parliament in August 2018 to her trips around the world demanding that political leaders take action to fight the climate crisis.
Continue reading...Cate Blanchett says she would rather be called an actor than an actress
Venice film festival jury chief backs Berlin event’s move towards gender-neutral prizes
The Hollywood star Cate Blanchett has said she would rather be called an actor than an actress.
The Australian, who is heading the jury at the Venice film festival, gave her backing to Berlin festival’s controversial decision last week to do away with gendered prizes and only give a best actor award.
Continue reading...Indonesia’s Yadnya Kasada festival – in pictures
During the annual Yadnya Kasada festival, the Tenggerese people climb Mount Bromo, an active volcano, and seek the blessing of the gods by presenting offerings of rice, fruit, livestock and other items. Inside the crater villagers use nets to try to catch the offerings
Continue reading...Woody Allen’s new film to open San Sebastián film festival
Rifkin’s Festival, which was shot in the Spanish city last year, chosen to headline annual film festival
Rifkin’s Festival, the new film by Woody Allen, has been selected to open the San Sebastián film festival in Spain.
Starring Elena Anaya, Louis Garrel and Gina Gershon, Rifkin’s Festival was shot in and around the city in 2019, and according to the plot synopsis takes place during the festival itself. “It tells the story of a married American couple who go to the San Sebastián festival and get caught up in the magic of the event, the beauty and charm of the city and the fantasy of movies. She has an affair with a brilliant French movie director, and he falls in love with a beautiful Spanish woman who lives there.”
Continue reading...Michael Eavis: Glastonbury could go bankrupt if it can’t be staged in 2021
Exclusive: Founder says another cancellation would ‘be curtains’ for festival and has hopes for testing scheme, with daughter Emily saying they will ‘mutate to survive’
Glastonbury organisers Michael and Emily Eavis fear they could be in serious financial danger if the festival was cancelled again due to coronavirus.
Speaking exclusively to the Guardian to mark the festival’s 50th anniversary, Michael said: “We have to run next year, otherwise we would seriously go bankrupt … It has to happen for us, we have to carry on. Otherwise it will be curtains. I don’t think we could wait another year.”
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