TsotsiDirected by Gavin HoodDVD out now This film traces six days in Tsotsi’s life in modern South Africa. He ends up caring for a baby he accidentally kidnaps during a carjacking.
A new version of Bertolt Brecht’s play by David Hare disappoints Mark Brown
The season of Edinburgh festivals kicks off with the art festival. The galleries in the cities have organised an impressive selection of work including painting, sculpture and visual media.
The SeagullDirected by Katie MitchellNational Theatre, LondonUntil 23 September This is a fresh and innovative production of one of the Russian playwright Anton Chekhov’s finest plays. It deals with conflicting visions of art, with love, class and the claustrophobia of bourgeois families.
Thom Yorke, more than any other modern rock musician, has consistently captured the popular mood of disgust and betrayal at the neo-liberal project, and George Bush and Tony Blair’s wars.
The performance of Peter Weiss’s play at the Arcola Theatre in Hackney, east London, on Thursday of last week was a remarkable event.
Poet and author Benjamin Zephaniah has curated an exhibition of photographs for the National Portrait Gallery. It is an incredibly uplifting experience.
Kandinsky: The Path To AbstractionTate Modern, central London until 1 Octoberwww.tate.org.uk A new exhibition follows the journey of Russian revolutionary artist Wassily Kandinsky from a figurative landscape painter to one of the founders of modern art. Kandinsky’s artistic revolution was heavily influenced by the Russian revolutionary movement and the revolution that occurred in Russia in 1917. This is an inspirational exhibition, with paintings conveying political turmoil and the birth of a new hope.
It is a powerful and romantic idea about past artists that they were visionaries starving in garrets, in some ways outside society. This image – deliberately created in part by artists themselves – can, if unpicked, tell us a great deal about how individuals responded to a rapidly changing world during the 19th century, and something about that world itself.
Hidden (Caché)Directed by Michael HanekeDVD out now George and Anne, a middle class French couple, receive a videotape which has two hours of surveillance of their home.
Tory leader David Cameron’s attempts to "rebrand" the Conservatives as young, hip and trendy took a knock recently when he launched a nasty attack on the British hip-hop and grime scene for allegedly encouraging knife and gun crime.
The best of the world’s Muslim artists are in London this summer for the 21st Salaam Music Village festival. This London-wide festival’s aim is to challenge the Islamophobic onslaught of the government and media and celebrate the stunning artistic forms of Muslim communities globally.
