feminism
Joseph Walsh
Canadian-Iranian director Sadaf Foroughi offers up a gut-wrenching tale of adolescent rebellion set against the strictures of an oppressive Middle Eastern society. It rivals the work of Asghar Farhadi in quality, telling the story of a 17-year-old student whose strong-willed ways lead her into conflict with her watchful parents and teachers. To Western eyes, Ava’s (Mahour Jabbari) acts of adolescent rebellion seem slight – wanting to study music wouldn’t often be met with disapproval by parents. At school she chats innocently with her best friend Melody (Shayesteh Sajadi), talking Read more ...
Laura de Lisle
Medea is the original crazy ex-girlfriend: the wronged woman who takes perfectly understandable revenge on the man who made her life hell. In Blueprint Medea, a new adaptation premiered at the Finborough Theatre in May 2019 and available on YouTube until 2nd August, writer-director Julia Pascal gives us a 21st-century reworking of Euripides’ tragedy. This Medea (Ruth D’Silva) is a Kurdish freedom fighter who’s come to England on a dodgy passport; working illegally as a cleaner, she meets Jason (Max Rinehart) – or Mohammed, to his Iraqi-immigrant parents. They move in together and Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
In the midst of our increasingly confrontational politics of race and gender, it was a timely move to make this series (on BBC Two) about Seventies radical feminism and the battle over the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) in the USA, even if some of the minutiae are liable to sound abstract or alien to British viewers. Cate Blanchett storms brilliantly to the fore as Phyllis Schlafly, a proud Republican housewife and champion of traditional family values, and staunch opponent of the Amendment.Schlafly is that bewildering paradox, a conservative revolutionary, which apparently is what lured Read more ...
On the Record review - #MeToo turns its lens to the music industry, gives the mic to women of colour
Jill Chuah Masters
On the Record, the latest documentary from Kirby Dick and Amy Ziering (acclaimed directors of The Hunting Ground), dives into the sexual misconduct allegations against music mogul Russell Simmons, the so-called ‘Godfather of Hip Hop.’ It centres on interviews with Drew Dixon (pictured below), who — as a twentysomething music executive — launched Whitney Houston hits and scouted a young Kanye West. She left the industry after Simmons allegedly raped her.This is an elegant, stinging addition to the #MeToo dialogue, which gives due emphasis to black women and the music industry — a Read more ...
Kathryn Reilly
Why don’t you have children? Why aren’t you married? Why don’t you own your own home? Why are you a failure? These are the societally enforced questions that, as a 34-year-old woman, Nadine Shah finds inescapable. Much like the rest of us. When talking to friends who also considered themselves “non-achievers”, she realised something was very wrong. And that nothing much has changed in what used to be termed “the battle of the sexes” (hence the Abigail’s Party style artwork). Having covered the refugee crisis, suicide and the state of the nation, now sexual inequality comes under her Read more ...
Joseph Walsh
Nisha Ganatra’s musical dramedy, penned by first time screenwriter Flora Greeson, isn’t going to win any prizes for originality and is almost unforgivably corny. But the feel-good vibes and winning combination of Tracee Ellis Ross and Dakota Johnson are still likely to win audiences over.Ross has been acting since the mid-90s, but has experienced a low-key renaissance in recent years, partly due to her role in Kenya Barris’ award-winning show, Black-ish. Of course, being the daughter of Motown legend Diana Ross and top music exec Robert Ellis Silberstein, she knows the music biz through and Read more ...
Jill Chuah Masters
The second half of Mark Cousins’ documentary on films by women filmmakers starts with religion; it ends with song and dance. This is a second seven-hour journey through cinema. It reconfirms Women Make Film as a remarkable feat of excavation and curation, as its twenty chapters showcase overlooked, excellent work by far-flung filmmakers. Hungarian filmmaker Ildikó Enyedi and Wang Ping, socialist China’s first female director, are featured alongside film-school favourites like Denis and Akerman.The actresses Thandie Newton (pictured below) and Debra Winger are lead narrators now. Their Read more ...
Joseph Walsh
Equally ambitious in scope as his 900min ode to cinema The Story of Film: An Odyssey, Mark Cousins’ latest work, Women Make Film, is a fourteen-hour exploration of the work of female film directors down the decades.Cousins’ Irish brogue no longer narrates the action, having replaced himself with the likes of Tilda Swinton (who also produces the film), Jane Fonda, Adjoa Andoh, Sharmila Tagore and Kerry Fox (at least in the first 20 chapters that this review covers). They, and Cousins, guide us on a self-described ‘road movie’, that shifts from clip to clip, Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Way into lockdown now and, as the music world adjusts, so what artists are attempting becomes, in some cases, more sophisticated. In others, many impressively make the most of whatever tech they have to hand. Either way it’s always fascinating to check in on the best that’s out there. Below is this week’s pick. Dive in!Foals’ FBC TransmissionsLast Friday Brit Award-winning alt-rockers Foals launched Foals Broadcast Corp Transmissions, a weekly series of short films that will be appearing over 12 weeks on YouTube. Foals are currently poised to become that rare thing, a stadium-level outfit who Read more ...
Veronica Lee
“There are places in India where it's safer to be a cow than a woman” is a seemingly innocuous statement, but for Indian comic Aditi Mittal it was a dangerous one to make in a comedy show. It led to her arrest after a man complained that it was offensive to Hindus (and possibly cows, who knows).Yet Mother of Invention, an energetic and engaging hour about where Mittal's feminism comes from, isn't a political show per se. It's silly and often raucous – she's upfront about her sexual life – but the low value placed on women in Indian society is an ever present underscore, and all the more Read more ...
Gaby Frost
Want to enact mass social change? Make it about children. About their health, their prosperity, their future. Make it about men; their security, their wellbeing. Make it about society. What benefits are there for the economy, the home? Just for God’s sake, remember… it doesn’t work to fight for women alone.In a masterful analysis of the many histories of women’s work in Britain since the mid-nineteenth century, historian Helen McCarthy’s Double Lives intricately broaches issues of class, race, social norms and of course, motherhood. “Slowly but unmistakeably”, McCarthy writes, “the wage- Read more ...
Marianka Swain
The National Theatre’s online broadcasts got off to a storming start with One Man, Two Guvnors – watched by over 2.5 million people, either on the night or in the week since its live streaming, and raising around £66,000 in donations. Let’s hope that engagement continues with their next offering: Sally Cookson’s dynamic adaptation of Charlotte Brontë’s novel, a Bristol Old Vic and National Theatre co-production which also toured the UK.Cookson’s devised work blows past the problems associated with transferring literature to stage. There is nothing stuffy or static about her version; on the Read more ...