Mark Kidel
mark.kidel
- Bio
- Mark is a documentary filmmaker and writer specialising in the arts and music. Recent films include "Colouring Light: Brian Clarke - An Artist Apart" and "Set the Piano Stool on Fire". He is currently finishing a documentary about John Adams, collaborating with Martin Amis on a film about Englishness and making a film about Elvis Costello.
Articles by Mark Kidel
DVD: Chronicle of a Summer
Monday, 20 May 2013
“Chronicle of a Summer” (“Chronique d’un été”) is one of the great documentaries of all time – and a work that could only have been made in France, home of the immensely influential Cahiers du cinéma... Read more... |
Two Gentlemen of Verona, Tobacco Factory, Bristol
Sunday, 14 April 2013
In spite of a text that feels at times like Shakespeare by numbers, Andrew Hilton’s tightly-knit company has once again pulled off an evening of captivating theatre. As in other productions from... Read more... |
CD: Rachid Taha - Zoom
Saturday, 23 March 2013
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... Read more... |
A Midsummer Night's Dream, Bristol Old Vic
Saturday, 16 March 2013
The thing about puppets, as those who have handled them know all too well, is that they take over. They have a life of their own. This is all fine and good as long as the puppet-masters don’t get... Read more... |
Filming John Adams
Tuesday, 05 March 2013
When I first approached John Adams with the idea of making a documentary about him, he gently but firmly turned me down: he had unequivocally bad memories of a film made a few years back, an... Read more... |
CD: Boz Scaggs - Memphis
Thursday, 28 February 2013
Boz Scaggs is one of the greatest white soul men. Endowed with a distinctive silk-lined voice, he has navigated the waters of blues, country, jazz and quality disco with ineffable cool and a pretty... Read more... |
Richard III, Tobacco Factory, Bristol
Thursday, 21 February 2013
Performing Shakespeare in a former cigarette factory in South Bristol has become something of a ritual for Andrew Hilton and his close-knit company. Any act of ritual requires a dedicated space and... Read more... |
CD: Anaïs Mitchell and Jefferson Hamer - Child Ballads
Sunday, 17 February 2013
Anaïs Mitchell is one of America’s leading new folk singers, a protégée of Ani di Franco. She is a poet steeped in the archetypes of Greek mythology, old stories that she has evoked in a contemporary... Read more... |
CD: Ballaké Sissoko - At Peace
Monday, 04 February 2013
Toumani Diabaté is the uncontested star of the Malian kora, but his Bamako neighbour Ballaké Sissoko is a close rival. His natural modesty, reflected in the coolness of his musicianship, has... Read more... |
DVD: Anna Karenina
Friday, 01 February 2013
Joe Wright’s screen adaptation of Tolstoy’s giant of a masterpiece, scripted by Tom Stoppard, takes a big risk that pays off: the many-layered late 19th-century novel is stripped to its bare bones... Read more... |
CD: Aaron Neville - My True Story
Saturday, 19 January 2013
Aaron Neville’s ache-soaked voice was nourished by the romance of doo-wop tearjerkers and late 1950s black rock’n’roll: the Drifters, Little Anthony and the Imperials, Hank Ballard and the... Read more... |
DVD: Shadow Dancer
Friday, 11 January 2013
The director James Marsh has made his name as a documentarian who brilliantly blurs the boundaries between fact and fiction. Both Man on Wire and Project Nim seamlessly wove together archive and... Read more... |
CD of the Year: Old Ideas - Leonard Cohen
Monday, 24 December 2012
Leonard Cohen has been the king of melancholy ever since he set out on his slow journey through the dark side. Befriending the black dog means being aware of the finite nature of life at every moment... Read more... |
Remembering Ravi Shankar, 1920-2012
Thursday, 13 December 2012
While living in Bombay in the late 1940s, betrayed by a business partner and his first marriage in the midst of painful implosion, Ravi Shankar decided to commit suicide. At the eleventh hour, a holy... Read more... |
CD: Brian Eno - Lux
Saturday, 10 November 2012
Brian Eno’s latest is the musical equivalent of slow food: something to savour in a state of quietude and away from the stresses of accelerated time. The ambient genre of which he was a pioneer has,... Read more... |
DVD: Mon Oncle/Jour de Fête
Friday, 26 October 2012
Jacques Tati is probably the most famous French comic of all time. Monsieur Hulot is one of those well-loved outsiders, rebels by default rather than vocation and melancholy clowns pitted against the... Read more... |
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