Director Pablo Larraín’s acclaimed recent film Jackie starred Natalie Portman as Jacqueline Kennedy following the assassination of her husband, US president JFK. With Neruda it seems that Larraín — who also directed 2012’s powerful anti-Pinochet drama No — is on more familiar territory, focusing this time on quite a different political figure: the Chilean Nobel prize-winning poet and Communist senator Pablo Neruda.
2017 marks the 100th anniversary of the Russian Revolution. This graphic novel is an accessible introduction to Russia’s “red year” and contributes to an important interpretation of the events.
Most importantly, it puts working class people as the agents of their own change and is sprinkled with small but significant funny events that bring to life how the revolution affected every aspect of the peoples’ lives.
Siobhan Brown looks at the likely impact of the Tories' welfare reforms.
The introduction of the Tories’ Welfare Reform and Work Bill in July marked the ongoing viciousness of the Conservative government intent on destroying the lives of some of the most vulnerable in society.
Touted by the Tories as making it “pay more to be in work than out of it”, they are now trying to pose themselves as the real party of working people.
The failure of the Labour Party to mount any serious challenge to the bill shows its continuing inability, in its current incarnation, to provide any opposition to austerity.
Not much is known about Lizzie Burns, the working class Irish woman who was also the partner of Friedrich Engels. Mrs Engels, Gavin McCrea’s debut novel, tries to fill in some gaps.
McCrea has clearly put heaps of research into bringing to life the places and people that Lizzie Burns encountered, and it is refreshing given when it is set for the book to have an Irish woman — some of the most vilified at the time — at its centre.
The speed with which Cameron formed his new cabinet was a sign of the Tories' urgent desire to push through more austerity and racist attacks. Siobhan Brown looks at what we can expect.
The shock result of a Conservative majority government was the news we didn’t want to hear. Most of us thought we wouldn’t. Ordinary people across Britain despaired at the thought of yet more cuts, redundancies and privatisation.
The Tories have already announced some of the most vicious cuts they can muster, with plenty more to come. That Iain Duncan Smith, the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, has said that it is irrelevant for voters to know where £12 billion worth of welfare cuts will come from suggests they plan to only get nastier.
Karl Marx's daughter helped organise unskilled workers in the East End of London. Here we reprint a section of the new Rebel's Guide, plus an extract of Eleanor Marx's May Day speech, and Siobhan Brown explains why she wrote the book.
The Great Dock Strike of 1889 represents New Unionism’s most significant action, involving thousands of workers in east London. An estimated 150,000 families relied on port work in the 1880s. It was mostly casual, with just 10 percent of workers having permanent and regular employment.
Director Wes Anderson, released 7 March
This fast paced film is classically Wes Anderson: full of wacky dialogue, detailed design work and some brilliant performances.
The film tells the story of the Grand Budapest Hotel - not in Budapest but fictional Zubrowska - throughout the 1930s. It focuses on the actions and adventures of Gustave H (Ralph Fiennes), a hotel concierge who is obsessed with comfort, detail and his older female clients. His tale is recounted by Zero Moustafa (Tony Revolori), a young lobby boy and Gustave's loyal right hand man.
Jeremy Deller's English Magic, part of the British Pavilion at the 2013 Venice Biennale, is touring in 2014. It includes We Sit Starving Together Amidst Our Gold, Deller's protest at the meddling of big business in art. In January the exhibition starts its UK tour at the William Morris Gallery in Walthamstow before visiting the Bristol Museum and Art Gallery and Turner Contemporary in Margate.
Tate Britain
Both until 23 March
Tate Britain reopened in November. The oldest part of the building has been restored, combining some of its most architecturally impressive parts with new elements. New learning studios and archive space follow the opening in May of new galleries to display "the best of British art."
£45 million has been spent on the overhaul and it's clear that a lot of the cash has come from big business. One space has been named the Sackler Octagon, while rooms that focus on particular artists or themes are given to us by BP.
Director Clio Barnard
The Selfish Giant is inspired by Oscar Wilde's story for children of the same name. The story follows two 14 year old boys, Swifty (played by Shaun Thomas) and Arbor (Conner Chapman), excluded from school, neglected by the authorities and living in poverty on Bradford's Buttershaw Estate.
