World War Two
theartsdesk Olympics: Leni Riefenstahl's Olympia!Saturday, 21 July 2012
It was Lenin who realised early in the Russian Revolution that “of all the arts, film is for us the most important” and Hitler and Goebbels perceived the immense propaganda potential of the Olympics through the medium of film. The 1936 Olympic Games... Read more... |
Yael Bartana: And Europe Will Be Stunned, Artangel at Hornsey Town HallMonday, 28 May 2012
In the cool, dim, municipal modernist interior of Hornsey Town Hall you’re confronted with a neon sign: And Europe Will be Stunned. It's the title of the trilogy of films at the heart of this Artangel-commissioned show by Israel-born Yael... Read more... |
Hitler's Children, BBC TwoThursday, 24 May 2012
Did Magda Goebbels do her children a favour by murdering all six of them in the bunker? Her rationale, as reported in the film Downfall, was the impossibility of imagining a life after Hitler for anyone called Goebbels.Most descendants of the Nazi... Read more... |
The Life and Death of Colonel BlimpFriday, 18 May 2012
It’s impossible to think of a contemporary British director or writer-director team making six consecutive masterpieces as did Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger when they followed The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943) with A Canterbury Tale... Read more... |
DVD: The Complete Humphrey Jennings, Volume Two: Fires Were StartedFriday, 11 May 2012
Like many 20th-century Britons, the documentarist Humphrey Jennings was inspired to do his greatest work by World War Two. The crisis elicited not only his genius as a poetic propagandist but as an unofficial sociologist who demonstrated that the... Read more... |
After Miss Julie, Young VicThursday, 22 March 2012
In 1888, the extremely weird Swedish playwright and novelist August Strindberg, the radical lefty son of a shipping merchant and a housemaid, wrote a play called Miss Julie about the conflict between the classes, between love and lust, between... Read more... |
Arena: The Dreams of William Golding, BBC TwoSunday, 18 March 2012
If you’re one of those readers who likes to believe that a novelist’s work and the life he leads have little or nothing to do with one another, then I trust you were watching last night’s Arena: The Dreams of William Golding.After an upbringing of... Read more... |
Revealed: The Nazi Titanic, Channel 5Wednesday, 07 March 2012
With the smoke from Julian Fellowes' upcoming Titanic mini-series for ITV becoming visible over the horizon, Channel 5 nipped in with this startling new spin on the tale of the doomed liner. It's not widely known that when the Nazis were riding high... Read more... |
The Return of Upstairs DownstairsMonday, 06 February 2012
The BBC's updated Upstairs Downstairs is not a lucky show. Its three-night debut in December 2010 brought unflattering comparisons to Downton Abbey, a fate also likely to greet the imminent series two thanks to Downton's booming national-treasure... Read more... |
TatsumiMonday, 09 January 2012
The Western image of manga comes from the thick volumes of knicker-flashing schoolgirls and lurid s.f. teenage boys pore over, and the anime (cartoon films) which adapt them. Singaporean director Eric Khoo’s animated adaptation of five stories by... Read more... |
Doctor Who Christmas Special: The Doctor, the Widow and the Wardrobe, BBC OneSunday, 25 December 2011
Next time you glance up at the stars, spare a thought for your Christmas tree. It’s probably topped by a star, but some of those in the sky might just be the spirit of the tree itself. By helping free the spirits of the trees in a forest, the Doctor... Read more... |
Graham Sutherland: An Unfinished World, Modern Art OxfordTuesday, 20 December 2011
Graham Sutherland and George Shaw have two things in common. They are both painters and both are associated with Coventry: Sutherland made his famous altarpiece work – a tapestry – for the city’s rebuilt cathedral, while Shaw grew up in... Read more... |
