Black WatchWritten by Gregory Burke, Directed by John Tiffanynow touring This play about British soldiers from the Black Watch regiment posted to the south of Iraq was a huge critical hit at last year’s Edinburgh Festival.
Any parent or teacher will know that comprehensive education is under attack from New Labour – the emphasis these days is on tests, selection and league tables.
Walk down any high street today and the chances are that the adverts you’ll be bombarded with are heavily influenced by a particular modern art movement that took hold in Europe and the US in the first half of the 20th century – Surrealism.
A new exhibition of the work of Glaswegian-born Jimmy Friell has just opened in London. Friell was acknowledged, in the 1930s, as one of Fleet Street’s finest cartoonists, and under the pseudonym Gabriel, he put his humour and his brilliant drawing skills to work for the Communist Party newspaper, the Daily Worker.
GhostsDirected by Nick BroomfieldDVD (Tartan Video) £19.99 This excellent film by the documentary maker Nick Broomfield dramatises events leading up to the tragic drowning of 23 Chinese cockle pickers in Morecambe Bay three years ago.
It’s been 13 years since the fall of apartheid in South Africa, when millions were allowed to vote in a democratic election for the first time.
Socialists have often felt rather uncomfortable with Futurism. This Italian art movement, founded in 1909, sang the praises of new technology, aeroplanes and the mass media – but it also exalted war and colonialism.
Pan’s LabyrinthDVD, £18 (Optimum)I Saw Ben Barka Get KilledDVD, £19 (Artificial Eye) Two of last year’s best political films are out now on DVD to buy or rent.
Unless you’ve been in a coma for the last few months, you’ll have heard of The Gossip, a punk rock outfit from Arkansas. The band recently topped NME magazine’s "cool list" – or rather their lead singer Beth Ditto did, since she’s the one who’s been generating headlines.
Carlos Latuff is a Brazilian cartoonist who deploys the style of classic US superhero comics – but for very different political ends.
When Tom Fool, Franz Xaver Kroetz’s 1978 drama about the implosion of a working class family in West Germany, was staged at the Citizens Theatre in Glasgow last November, audiences were astonished by the power of a play that gets right to the heart of family life under capitalism.
Nigerian musician Femi Kuti was recently in Britain as part of the third African Soul Rebels tour.
