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.
Red Road - review
Andrea Arnold's Red Road and the surveillance society
Closed Circuit Tunnel Vision
This Is England - review
Tom Jennings' review of Shane Meadows' film based in the early skinhead scene and how it changed when fascists began to recruit within it.
The Archaeology of Aggro
The latest project from the foremost cinematic chronicler of contemporary Britain is, unexpectedly, a period piece depicting the 1983 rites of passage of 12-year-old Shaun (Tommo Turgoose) finding acceptance among skinhead scoundrels convivial enough to include Milky, a Black lad (Andrew Shim), punks, and even New Romantics.
Utopian (Euro) Visions? (2007). Tom Jennings
Tom Jennings' commentary on explicit prejudice and implicit bias in Europe's favourite song contest.
Utopian (Euro) Visions?
MOVE organisation UK tour and documentary - review
Tom Jennings presents the MOVE organisation's documentary, shown at the Star and Shadow cinema in Newcastle during a screening tour of the UK.
Move Something!
South Africa: diamond miners strike
Miners in South Africa voted on Friday to launch an unlimited strike.
Members of the National Union of Mineworkers were ballotted for strike action after the De Beers group refused their salary demands. A representative of the NUM announced that some 11000 mine-workers would join the strike.
Jin, Ba obituary, 1904-2005
Obituary in the Guardian of Chinese author and anarchist Ba Jin, on Tuesday October 18, 2005 by John Gittings
Ba Jin:Chinese writer who made the journey from anarchism to Mao and back again
Bring the war to the streets - AYN art
Photographs of an anti-Iraq war art project carried out by some people involved in the Anarchist Youth Network in 2002 and 2003. Most may not believe now that it was very politically useful but it is archived here for reference. The concept of it was threefold: to put military imagery into peaceful London settings, to illustrate that the British government going to war in Iraq would likely bring conflict to the UK in terms of terrorism and as a call to action, to bring a war against the war-mongering capitalist system to the streets of the UK. It involved sticking toy soldiers about the place, and camouflaging everyday objects about the city with paint.
Jean Seberg - screen icon and Black Panther supporter
Born in Iowa in 1938, Jean Seberg was an iconic actress of the 1960s and 70s whose support for radical politics led to her being hounded by the FBI as part of a wider campaign against the American New Left.
Though she had starred in respected films beforehand (for instance playing Joan of Arc in Otto Preminger's Saint Joan), it was not until her role as Patricia, aspiring journalist and American girlfriend of a Parisian thug, in Jean-Luc Godard's new wave cinema classic, Breathless, that Seberg earned her place as a cinematic icon.
Sócrates - midfielder and anti-dictatorship resister
Brazil and Corinthians midfielder, doctor of medicine and philosophy, Sócrates also organised demonstrations of opposition to Brazil's military dictatorship.
Born Sócrates Brasileiro Sampaio de Souza Vieira de Oliveira, Sócrates captained Brazil at both the 1982 and 1986 World Cups.
Javier Zanetti - Zapatista supporter
Inter Milan captain Javier Zanetti was instrumental in building links between his club and the Zapatistas.
With Zanetti leading the drive, Inter Milan funded sports, water and health projects in the Chiapas region of Mexico, where the Zapatistas operate.
