media and culture
News and articles about work, policy and workers' struggles in the media and culture industries around the world, and analysis and reviews of art, culture and the media.
Favela Rising - review
Tom Jennings is disappointed at Favela Rising’s focus on its founder’s personality rather than Brazilian Afro-Reggae’s grass-roots potential.
Riodemption Songs
Directed by Jeff Zimbalist & Matt Mochary, the Oscar-nominated Favela Rising documents the development of the Afro-Reggae cultural movement in Vigario Geral, one of 600-odd illegal shanty settlements (favelas) perched precariously among the hills behind Rio de Janeiro’s Copacabana beach which together house over 20 million inhabitants in desperate poverty.
The ‘G’ Word - review
Tom Jennings' review of the graffiti art show at the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art in Gateshead.
Bombing Babylon
Babel - review
Tom Jennings reviews Babel, starring Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett and directed by Alejandro Gonzáles Iñárritu.
A World Within Ear Shot
The Hive of Liberty - review
As a new edition of The Hive of Liberty is published Tom Jennings welcomes renewed interest in 18th century Tyneside radical Thomas Spence.
Pearls Before Swine
Hip Hop Is Dead - review
Tom Jennings interprets Nas’ provocation that ‘Hip Hop Is Dead’ in terms of the limited liberal horizons of civil rights.
Premature Ejaculations
Freedom Writers - review
Richard LaGravenese's liberal feel-good film Freedom Writers offers no real solutions to the problems in inner-city schools and neighbourhoods.
Blackboard Whitewash
Shameless - review
Tom Jennings' review of the fourth series of Channel 4's TV show set on a Manchester council estate, Shameless.
Lost In La Manchesta
The Trap: What Happened to our Dream of Freedom - review
BBC 2’s ‘The Trap’ documentaries can’t see beyond the false dreams of freedom they expose, argues Tom Jennings
Paradise Mislaid
Rebelution - review
Tanya Stephens’ new album Rebelution is subtitled ‘a movement without denial or regret’ – making class-conscious ethics central to reggae’s message. Tom Jennings rides its rhythms.
No Woman Definitely No Cry
The Lives of Others - review
Bogus history, liberal wish-fulfilment, bourgeois triumphalism – no wonder ‘The Lives of Others’ won an Oscar, reckons Tom Jennings
Rehabilitating Big Brother
[film review published in Freedom, Vol. 68, No. 12, June 2007; plus reader’s response and author’s reply]
