THE BITTER and bloody Israeli-Palestinian conflict is, you would imagine, hardly the subject for satire. Palestinian film-maker Elia Suleiman has achieved the impossible with his latest film Divine Interventions. It presents a funny and profound look at the situation.
THE NEW book Small Acts of Treachery by Kitty Fitzgerald begins in a secret military barracks, where Eileen Mahoney is being detained by the state as a suspected terrorist. Brought up by her socialist father, Mahoney has been involved in the major movements of the last three decades, from civil rights in Ireland to the 1984-5 miners' strike.
NOMMO IS a great album by the band Slovo. It is influenced by music from around the world and has very political lyrics. Slovo is the new project of Dave Randall, former guitarist with the band Faithless.
CARRYING THE Elephant is a wonderful collection of prose-poems by author, broadcaster and Socialist Worker columnist Michael Rosen. This is a book that can be dipped into, as each piece stands alone. But it can also, unlike many other poetry books, be read from beginning to end as the story of one man's life.
An angry demonstration gathers outside a detention centre to protest against the deportation of refugees, chanting "To send them back is murder!" A young refugee, traumatised by war, sits in a stark room being screamed at by insensitive officials. These are just two of the powerful scenes from the first episode of a new BBC TV drama, Face at the Window.
HEARTLESS CREW are one of the leading acts behind the Anti Nazi League's Love Music Hate Racism organisation. They played at the carnival in Manchester in September and at the London launch party on Friday last week.
A NEW generation of activists is discovering the power of socialist ideas. Here trade unionists and socialists from across Britain recommend books that changed how they see the world. All of the books that feature would make great presents. They are all available from Bookmarks bookshop.
A BOMB blast rips through a market square full of people. The horrific aftermath is blamed on terrorists. More standard Hollywood fare post 11 September? In fact it is part of an excellent film, The Quiet American. This is directed by Philip Noyce (who also directed Rabbit-Proof Fence), and it stars Michael Caine and Brendan Fraser.
AFTER THE huge success of the anti-racist carnival in Manchester in August, the Anti Nazi League (ANL) is launching Love Music Hate Racism as a national campaign. We want to use it to target the areas where groups like the Nazi BNP and NF are trying to grow. Music is a very good way of getting people involved in the fight against the Nazis. Lots of people are getting in touch and saying, "Manchester was great - we want to do something in our area." There have been gigs in Barrow-in-Furness and Oldham. There are others coming up in Huddersfield, Burnley and Blackburn. The leader of Sunderland council has approached us to set something up there. Trade unions are getting involved.
The film Donnie Darko is set in a middle class school in small town America. It is a far cry from most teen movies on offer today. It is a satire about the end of US president Ronald Reagan's era in the late 1980s. Donnie Darko shows how you have to deal with more than your sexuality and your parents when you're a teenager. This film recognises that you also have to confront the world you live in.
ANYONE WITH a computer can now access talks on almost every imaginable aspect of socialist history, theory and argument, and much more besides. The fantastic website www.geocities.com/resistancemp3 consists of hundreds of original talks "on topics from anti-capitalism to Zionism by Socialist Workers Party members, Noam Chomsky, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King and others". Most of the talks are recordings of speeches at the annual Marxism event organised by the SWP in London each summer. Others are recordings from the media and meetings elsewhere.
