RED AMNESIA at the GFT

This review from The Hollywood Reporter gives a perceptive synopsis of the themes of this Modern Chinese mystery thriller.

"As the title suggests, Red Amnesia considers the selective memory that erases past stains as contemporary China continues its frantic sprint to become a social and economic superpower. Wang Xiaoshuai's latest is somewhat bipolar, beginning as an unhurried mystery about the harassment of an elderly widow before abruptly switching gears more than halfway through to take an unsentimental plunge into the past. Combining elements of melodrama and thriller with a strong political subtext, this is a challenging work that guards its secrets closely but builds cumulative power."

Though the article is quite wrong to describe the main characters home as a "shabby apartment" , for Chinese standards she lives in a well-off upper civil service quarter with leafy suburban streets away from the noise and air-pollution of Beijing with each apartment block having ample greenery and gardens of varies flora.The very kind of place that a successful apparatchik who negotiated the vagaries of Maoist times with all the guile and ruthlessness required would aspire hope to retire to.This becomes very pivotal to the plot and conclusion of the film.

OCEAN COLOUR SCENE at the ROYAL CONCERT HALL

"Having sold millions of records and headlined arenas around the world, Steve, Simon and Oscar from Ocean Colour Scene have reached their landmark 25th anniversary. To celebrate, the three of them will play a very special UK tour in concert halls accompanied by Q Strings.
These shows are the latest chapter in a remarkable career that’s seen OCS rise from Breton shirt-wearing Stone Roses disciples to one of Britpop’s biggest bands (their 1998 arena tour was the biggest by any UK group that year). In their 25 years together, they’ve enjoyed five Top 10 albums, six Top 10 singles and a mantelpiece full of awards.
But behind all the swagger and the style were great songs, with words and melodies that found their way into your head and heart."
The diehard fans could name every tune in 1 note , going hysterical before the guys even strummed the first cord.The song below was a particular favourite
So Low



Pared down , it was remarkable how very much there is a distinctive Motown feel to all the songs , no matter the theme , whether happy or melancholy , the songs have an upbeat foundation and the kind of harmony one would expect if Marvin Gaye or Bobby Womack were writing and performing music today.

The Day We caught the Train


Though it was the first time i have seen them a lot of the songs sounded familiar , without realising i would have heard them many many times of the radio in the 90's , especially this one
One For The Road

QUEENS OF SYRIA at the GFT

One of the oldest plays ever written about war and its affects om Woman Euripides Trojan Women
 was staged in Amman, Jordan last Winter, a two thousand year old play about war and its aftermath and the catastrophic devastation of civilian life. But in this unique staging the  actors , none who have previous acting experience before  had gone through identical experiences to the characters they portrayed, just just across the border in their home of Syria where they were all refugee survivors living the existence of day to day concerns , worries , anxieties in an uncertain present with the prospects for the future lying between bad and worse as their Families and Homes are destroyed by the ongoing war in their beloved homeland for which they pine , long and yearn for on an hour to hour basis.Many tell harrowing tales of a lost husband, a son, a brother.
 Like Hecuba, the queen of Troy,  each of them had suffer grief and loss in their own way.

The women work to incorporate their stories into the play, as a way of communicating to the world what had happened to them and plead to hear , empathise and accept their story. This film will tells the story of 40 women who were brought together in a drama workshop to tell the world their 21st century stories through an ancient play from 415BC, in one unique performance.

  Queens of Syria trailer from Yasmin Fedda on Vimeo.

This review from The Variety gives a very good overview of the project and the delicate , revealing and tender filming by director Yasmin Fedda

"Fedda’s interest is the process — how these traumatized women react to Euripides, and how they respond to Abu Saada and coach Mohammad’s exercises, in which they’re given freedom to incorporate their stories into the performance. Some blossom: Confident, sociable Fatima sees the play as a way of communicating and understanding her experiences: “Hecuba is so close to me.” Another identifies with Cassandra and her desire for vengeance. As the weeks pass, those who remain visibly relax before the cameras, benefiting from the experience of working together as a group and the energy that comes from the act of self-expression. The final staging is both choral and singular, the stark immediacy of their traumas given added potency, thanks to the uniform blackness of their clothes and the minimalist production design.
“I have reached the end of my sorrows,” the women recite in unison, similar to Hecuba’s line as she departs from Troy: “This surely is the last, the utmost limit this, of all my sorrows.” Like Euripides, Fedda knows this is a sorrow that lingers, and as their refugee status becomes ossified, and the women face ever more difficult decisions about the possibility of returning to a destroyed country, their grief will not have reached an end."

You can get a lot more information including background to the project , the profiles of the film makers from the dedicated website for this exceptional and endearing story.

THEEB at the GFT

This captivating story shot in the breath-taking sparse , yet immense, mountain scenery of Southern Jordan gives an Arabic-Bedouin perspective of the time of Lawrence of Arabia in what will soon be the centenary anniversary of the Picot-Sykes carve-up of the Arab World of which we are still feeling the terrifying shockwaves today.

The beauty of the film is the multi-layered themes are presented in an almost implicit time stands still way , as if the landscape and the shimmering milky way are telling the tale from the vantage of permanent virtues being temporally interrupted by the short time values of vice , something the land and the sky have seen come and go many times before.



This review from Variety gives a fair account of the plot and themes in the film.

"Like all well-done adventure tales, especially those with an intimate human focus and an expansive, epic vision, “Theeb” works on multiple levels. On the one hand, it’s the story of a young boy who witnesses his beloved brother’s death and has to survive the inhospitable desert while thinking of ways to restore his family’s honor — classic horse-opera material, complete with marauding bandits. By making his protag a young boy however, the director sidesteps the usual black-and-white, honor-and-revenge mainstays of the genre, which certainly exist here but are tempered by Theeb’s youth and uncertainty.

Then there’s the historical context, which Abu Nowar very much wants audiences to understand — intro titles are far too ubiquitous in contempo cinema, yet this is one case where a brief explanation of Ottoman-British enmity might come in handy, especially given the West’s distressing ignorance of the subject (“Lawrence of Arabia,” shot nearby, covers similar ground). “Theeb” is set at the moment when the Bedouin lifestyle was on the cusp of radical change, and pilgrim guides like Hussein were made redundant by trains going all the way to Mecca. Young Theeb is a witness to these shifts, his survival dependent on the training he receives watching his brother, but his future as a traditional nomad is coming to an end."