Tag: politics
David Goldblatt: Photographs 1948-2018
Friday, November 23rd, 2018 Art Column,“I was never interested in making propaganda for anybody,” said David Goldblatt, “and didn’t allow my photos to be used that way.” It’s an important point because even Goldblatt’s admirers tend to see him as a political photographer who drew global attention to the injustices of Apartheid. As this landmark retrospective at the Museum of […]
Widows
Friday, November 23rd, 2018 Film Reviews,When Steve McQueen won the 2013 Academy Award for Best Picture for 12 Years a Slave, it was a testament to his choice of subject matter rather than his skills as a director. With a background in video art – a medium in which boring and pointless exercises often enjoy critical acclaim – McQueen has […]
Fahrenheit 11/9
Thursday, October 25th, 2018 Film Reviews,Godwin’s Law states that the longer an on-line discussion continues the more likely it is that someone will mention Hitler. In Fahrenheit 11/9 it takes Michael Moore an hour-and-a-half to invoke Der Führer, but when he does there’s no holding back. We get newsreel footage of Hitler addressing a rally, but the voiceover comes from […]
Steirischer Herbst 2018
Thursday, October 4th, 2018 Art Column,In the words of Thomas Bernhard, Austria’s greatest novelist of the late 20th century, the city of Graz was “a nest of Nazis”. In a speech of last year, Georg Friedrich Haas, Austria’s foremost living composer, reeled off a list of Nazis that had remained faithful to the Führer in post-war Graz, including his own […]
The Insult
Friday, August 31st, 2018 Film Reviews,Mention the Middle East and most people think of the intractable conflict between the Israelis and their Arab neighbours, but the region is riddled with lingering enmities that never make international headlines. Beirut, once the most glamorous and cosmopolitan of cities, was the epicentre of a brutal civil war from 1975-1990 which began with battles […]
The Gospel According to André
Friday, July 13th, 2018 Film Reviews,Those who watched The September Issue – the 2009 documentary that sparked a wave of fashion movies, will remember André Leon Talley as a larger-than-life presence in Vogue magazine’s inner circle. Loud, camp and flamboyant, Talley is the big black guy who seems to hang around the office doing nothing in particular. If Vogue’s uptight […]
Sicario: Day of the Soldado
Friday, June 29th, 2018 Film Reviews,If this were one of those reviews that run in a box at the side of the page it would read: “A relentlessly brutal and stupid film that does no-one any favours.” The chief difference between this sequel and the original Sicario of 2015, comes down to two significant absences. Canadian Director, Denis Villeneuve, has […]
Head On Photo Festival 2018
Friday, May 18th, 2018 Art Column,Head On is still not getting the attention it deserves. We make a big fuss about the Sydney Biennale, we go wild for Vivid, we swarm over the Sydney foreshores during Sculpture by the Sea, but after ten years the Head On Photo Festival survives on a fraction of the resources devoted to other events. […]
Isle of Dogs
Thursday, April 12th, 2018 Film Reviews,It may be the Year of the Dog but the Japanese are definitely cat people. Until recently Fido held his own against Kitty as a domestic pet but now the cats are in the ascendency and are surging ahead. It could hardly be otherwise with the ubiquitous Maneki Neko (“Hello Kitty!”) waving its paw in […]
The Other Side of Hope & Paul: Apostle of Christ
Friday, April 6th, 2018 Film Reviews,In pre-Enlightenment days ‘history’ was a mass of tall stories, myths and rumours. Authors were happy to recount tales of miracles and supernatural events, readers were happy to believe them. In the mid-1800s it was still scandalous when writers such as David Strauss and Ernst Renan began to challenge the historical basis of the Bible, […]