Film Festival
LFF Review: The Neutral Ground
The murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer on 25 May 2020 was the catalyst for Black Lives Matter protests which erupted across the United States and beyond. While this triggered a debate about memorials to our colonial past in Britain, there were already moves to remove Confederate statues from Southern towns and …
LFF Review: Shepherd
Although this applies to some of us more than others, as humans we are social animals. We yearn for the company of others, to forge friendships and make our own families. This is how early man survived in harsh and dangerous landscapes. However, when something terrible happens we can often retreat and look inwards for …
LFF Review: The Sea Ahead
Lebanon is a country in an existential crisis. Today, the currency has all but collapsed and inflation spirals out of control. While fuel shortages have made normal life all but impossible. The most talented young people have left the country and civil unrest increases inexorably. The majority of the population have fallen into poverty. Beirut …
LFF Review: Babi Yar. Context
Babi Yar is a ravine in Kiev. Its bloody past has afforded it a place in the darkest days of history. Over the course of the 29th and 30th September, 1941, approximately 33,771 Jews were massacred by the occupying German forces. Their bodies dumped and covered with earth in the deep gorge. In the months …
LFF Review: Leave No Traces
Poland has long played an integral role in European history. The invasion of the country by Germany sparked World War II and its subsequent membership of the Eastern Bloc and the Warsaw Pact, revolution and independence have all been turbulent. Solidarity, a trade union movement, played a pivotal role in this political change. In 1983, …
LFF Review: The Alleys
When we’re children, the world around you feels huge and scary. However, as we get older, we soon realise just how small our neighbourhood is. If you live in compact housing, there’s a reasonable chance everyone knows each other. This can be both good and bad. While communities can be great sources of support and …
LFF Review: Ripples of Life
Today’s capitalist China is almost unrecognisable from where the country was at the end of the last century. By embracing private enterprise and a market economy, the ‘red dragon’ has focussed its massive human, technological and mineral resources into becoming the second largest economy in the world. However, this revolution has come at a price, …
Grimmfest Review: Blast
Hollywood seems to be obsessed with making big budget action movies which are overloaded with ludicrous set-pieces, vastly overpaid stars and plotlines which could be written on the back of a cigarette packet. All covered in lashings and lashings of obtrusive and often terrible CGI. There’s an obsession with bigger and louder. However, some of …
LFF Review: All About My Sisters
Families are complex and often contradictory groupings at the best of time, but when you add severe external pressures into the mix the many interrelationships can become far more complicated. Introduced by the Communist Party of China in the early 1980s, the ‘one-child’ policy was intended to combat rapid population growth. It was strictly policed …
Grimmfest Review: The Pizzagate Massacre
The wave of populism which followed in the footsteps of Donald Trump has had a profound and lasting impact on American society. Providing a catalyst for the rise of white nationalism, right-wing commentators and alt-right politicians. Not to mention the spike in misinformation and conspiracy theories. One of the strangest was ‘Pizzagate’, a child sex/human …