Five things to do or see this month
Issue section:
Issue:
Lift theatre festival
Various London venues, until 2 July
Lift theatre festival
Various London venues, until 2 July
Michael Moore’s new film is not, as the title implies, a film about overwhelming US military might and another ill-conceived imperialist war. Instead the more bizarre premise involves Moore “invading” various countries himself to take the best from their societies and return to an America he characterises as dysfunctional.
Fire at Sea is a powerful and moving documentary about refugees on the Italian Mediterranean island of Lampedusa. So far 400,000 migrants have landed on the island and 15,000 have died making the dangerous journey by sea. The film depicts migrants in dinghies at the mercy of border patrols who exercise complete callous authority over the refugees.
“If you say how the world is, that should be enough”, says Ken Loach at the start of this documentary, adding that “politics is essential”. His is a kind of politics which wants to show how working class people live, find their humanity and resist.
This is exemplified in films such as Kes (1969), which demonstrates how a young working class boy is able to develop his own unique personality through his relationship with a kestrel.
The exhibition’s title refers to the boxes/cages in which Bacon confines his subjects. The viewers/voyeurs can see them; the subjects can only feel them confining them. The paintings are undeniably disturbing — only the unconscious or dead would not be disturbed.
“We are anti-racist and anti-fascist” claimed the Clash in their first interview with the then important music paper the NME. They explained that they had been at the riot at the Notting Hill Carnival that year (1976) and thought that “young white kids” needed to develop a culture of their own in order to fight back as black people were doing.
Arabian Nights
Vols 1 & 2 out now, vol 3 out 6 May, in cinemas and on Mubi
It has been five years since Polly Jean Harvey’s last and much celebrated album Let England Shake, which adopted a more overtly political approach to music, with haunting imagery of poverty and war.
Since then we have seen Harvey speak out through a song about Shaker Aamer, the British Guantanamo Bay ex-detainee held for over 13 years without charge.
This is an important documentary on the inspirational life of the Marxist revolutionary, CLR James, structured around his books and illuminating some of his more overlooked work. The film is narrated through interview material with different writers and people who knew James, providing a detailed account of his intellectual contribution.