tue 08/10/2024

Algeria

Zineb Sedira: Dreams Have No Titles, Whitechapel Gallery review - a disorientating mix of fact and fiction

The downstairs of the Whitechapel Gallery has been converted into a ballroom or, rather, a film set of a ballroom. From time to time, a couple glides briefly across the floor, dancing a perfunctory tango. And they are really hamming it up, not for...

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Joseph Andras: Tomorrow They Won't Dare to Murder Us review - injustice and tenderness in the Algerian War

Joseph Andras wastes no time. “Not a proud and forthright rain, no. A stingy rain. Mean. Playing dirty.” This is how his debut novel kicks off, and it’s a fitting start for his retelling of the arrest, torture, one-day trial and subsequent execution...

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CD: Rachid Taha - Je suis africain

Rachid Taha, sadly felled by a heart attack just over a year ago, has come back from the dead! He could not sound more lively than on this vibrant posthumous offering, definitely not something cooked up from tasty leftovers, but a well thought-...

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CD: Yasmine Hamdan - Al Jamilat

Lebanese singer Yasmine Hamdan founded Beirut’s groundbreaking 1990s electro-duo Soapkills with Zeid Hamdan – the first Middle Eastern electro band to garner a cult following across the Arab world. More recently she featured in Jim Jarmusch’s 2013...

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The Life and Times of Fanny Hill, Bristol Old Vic

Turning John Cleland’s 18th-century erotic classic Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure into a convincing stage play is a tall order. The book, a product of male fantasy, is a catalogue of sexual feats of every order, rich in euphemism and with a...

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CD: Tinariwen - Emmaar

On seeing that new Tinariwen album, Emmaar, had been recorded at Joshua Tree (due to ongoing security problems in their native Mali) with a number of American guest musicians, my heart sank. I imagined some special guest-heavy yet artistically...

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Siege in the Sahara, Channel 4

Bruce Goodison has been responsible for some of the more impressive television of the last decade, sometimes drama, sometimes straight documentary, and sometimes drama-documentary, like his Flight 93: The Flight That Fought Back. He was back in the...

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Reissue CDs Weekly: Shadow Morton, Motorama, Rob Jo Star Band, Souad Massi

Various Artists: Sophisticated Boom Boom!! – The Shadow Morton StoryWithout Shadow Morton, Amy Winehouse could not have made Back to Black. The songs the enigmatic sonic wizard wrote and produced for The Shangri-Las in the mid Sixties were integral...

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CD: Rachid Taha - Zoom

Unlike the Rai masters Khaled and Mami, who grew up in Algeria and are slightly uncomfortable with the audience-winning slide into rock, Rachid Taha is a beur, a North African born in France, raised on punk but with a thorough knowledge of his...

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Orchestre National de Barbès, Queen Elizabeth Hall

I love the fact that under the “genre” tab on their Facebook page, Orchestre National de Barbès have opted for “Other” from the dropdown menu. Obviously in Facebookland “Other” simply means not rock, soul, hi-hop, jazz, reggae, classical etc....

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Who Do You Think You Are? - June Brown, BBC One

Your typical consumer of Who Do You Think You Are? on BBC One would almost certainly have been disappointed by last night's first instalment of the eighth series. There were no tears from June Brown, EastEnders' Dot Cotton, for a start. That is as...

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Outside the Law

Australia's cricketers used to call batsman Mark Waugh "Afghanistan", because (compared to his brother Steve) he was the Forgotten Waugh. It was a reference to the Soviet campaign against the Mujahideen during the 1980s. But few wars in recent-ish...

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