THE UNCERTAINTY AND wildness of a country in a constant state of civil war comes under the loupe in José Miguel Ribeiro’s astonishing achievement of a film, Nayola. Animated with a deep and convincing understanding of hand-drawn colour and landscape and a respect for the bubbles of air […]
PICTURE THE SCENARIO: You’re on the cusp of adulthood, the eldest of many children. Contrary to your father’s wishes, you have decided to be educated. It’s the late 19th century and your mother supports this great wish of yours to make a life for yourself. And it’s all […]
LOSS. IT’S A wound that can open at any time. An absence that will change your life forever, in ways that you cannot fathom. The complexities of bereavement are under the loupe in Narcosis, an extraordinary and deep film from the pen of Martijn de Jong. One of […]
HE HAS EYES like lamplights: big and bright. He cries vocally when he is very sad. And sniffs when he’s feeling miserable. You can see the tears staining his face. His emotions take him away from peccadilloes like carrots from human hands. This is Eo, a small grey […]
WHAT DO YOU think you were put on this planet for? To hone your artistic instrument? Make babies? Save the world? Whatever the question, the answer sometimes comes rather unexpectedly and with great gusto, from the universe itself. The Bulgarian film Mother, written, directed and produced by Zornitsa […]
SAY THE WORD ‘Fiddler’ in the film context to virtually anyone you meet, and they will know exactly what you mean. Fiddler on the Roof is like Van Gogh’s ear or Beethoven’s Fifth, in a broader cultural sphere. It’s also up there as the pinnacle of shlock culture […]
IF YOU DIDN’T know it was true, you’d deem it unbelievable. That’s Angela Merkel’s charmed life: It fits the parameters of a classical fairy tale. Clever girl born into marginalised village grows up to see democracy happen and later to become the country’s chancellor and lead it on […]
AS YOU PUT your hands together in salute of this theatre work, and shift yourself to stand in loyal ovation, you are celebrating and honouring not only this particular theatre work, but the treasure that Pieter-Dirk Uys is to this country. It’s a feeling that floods through the […]
A BUILT-UP PLACE is so much more than a dot on a map. It’s a repository of history and emotions, of architecture and lives. But how do you catch its essence: the stuff of which it is made, today and yesterday? How to you portray the energy that […]
SHE WAS A feminist before it was fashionable, a French Impressionist born in Pennsylvania, a woman painter in a man’s world. She took intaglio printmaking by the horns and created arguably one of the world’s most valuable collections of images. This was Mary Cassatt. Her story Mary Cassatt: […]
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