カテゴリー: Culture
The Hindu festival of Holi is under way in India. The celebration heralds the arrival of spring Continue reading…
Mundane life meets magical daydreams in a West Bengal village where discarded film footage is turned into toysAn artful hybrid of documentary and fiction, That Cloud Never Left zooms in on quotidian life in Daspara, a small West Bengal village where to…
Government appears to backtrack on decree after women take to social media to sing in defiance under #IAmMySong hashtagAfghanistan’s Ministry of Education appears to be backtracking on a decision to impose a nationwide singing ban on schoolgirls.In a l…
Bajrang Dal hardliners in Madhya Pradesh threaten violence over plays ‘disrespectful to the Indian flag’Rightwing Hindu vigilante groups in the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh have forced the cancellation of an annual theatre festival, after threatening…
Prevented from travelling abroad by the Covid pandemic, locals are instead visiting the magnificent glaciers of the Tian Shan mountain range near Kazakhstan’s biggest city, Almaty Continue reading…
Release of pioneering director’s work could be hampered by interview in which she called China ‘a place where there are lies everywhere’The Chinese release of Golden Globe-winning film Nomadland could be in doubt after accusations its Beijing-born dire…
Movie about an affair between a woman and an older man aims to challenge stereotype of Afghan women as weak and repressedThere are few pavements in Kabul, so when Shahrbanoo Sadat steps out for her daily walk, she shares the roads with cars and tanks. …
Born under Taliban rule, Sara Barackzay studied abroad and now hopes to start her own schoolA woman in traditional dress breaks open the bars of a prison. A young child dances, oblivious to a backdrop of tanks and explosions. The drawings by Afghanista…
Written by and starring comedian Jia Ling, the film has started a conversation about mother’s love and women’s identityA Chinese comedian’s directoral debut about a woman who travels back in time to see her dead mother has become the fourth highest gro…
Nermin Niazi and Feisal Mosleh were teenage immigrants blending their Pakistani musical heritage with Pet Shop Boys and Depeche Mode – and their punchy disco LP has been rescued from obscurityOpening its doors in 1970, Birmingham’s Zella Studios played…
Hammond was known for works inspired by the natural world and critical of colonial destructionRenowned New Zealand artist Bill Hammond has died, prompting an outpouring of grief and aroha from Kiwis. He was 74.Hammond was born in Christchurch in 1947 a…
Sarmad Khoosat was the darling of Pakistan’s entertainment industry until his new film, the haunting and elegiac Zindagi Tamasha, fell foul of fundamentalists – who called for him to be beheadedSarmad Khoosat was having an early morning cigarette in Bu…
The adaptation of Aravind Adiga’s Booker-winning novel is coming to Netflix – one of a growing number of films from the region snapped up by the streaming giantsThe White Tiger, the film adaptation of the Booker prize-winning book by Aravind Adiga, mar…
Spy Princess is based on Noor Inayat Khan, killed in France while working as a British spy in second world warThe story of the daughter of an Indian Sufi mystic, who was killed while a British secret agent fighting with the French resistance in the sec…
When Taal volcano, a popular tourist site in Batangas, erupted a year ago 5,000 people fled the island. It’s still considered dangerous. The government bans former residents from returning but some still live there in tents Continue reading…