FORMALITY AND RETICENCE: (L to R) Guo Keyu, Zu Feng, Lin Muran, Sun Xilun
[Courtesy of Blue Finch Film Releasing]
HENRY BELL is fascinated by the underlying curiosities and contradictions of one of the great poets of the Mediterranean
DAVID RENTON recommends a books that explores the ways in which disabled people are made to feel both of and not part of this world
JONATHAN TAYLOR is fascinated by the philosophical problems that permeate the art of life-writing
GORDON PARSONS steps warily in between the lines of Britain’s most famous diarist
SIMON DUFF recommends a recording of Arvo Part that takes the listener on a pilgrimage through seemingly distant times and events of the Bible
TWO days after I interviewed the young Chinese film-maker Lin Jianjie, Donald Trump escalated the trade trade war between the US and China with the comment that “we should never have let them get so rich.”
What does it mean for Chinese socialism to have allowed its population to “become rich,” and what does contemporary Chinese culture tell us about this?
In Lin’s film Brief History of a Family, he brings a precise, through-a-microscope attention to this very question. “The government,” he says, “doesn’t mention much about class difference,” but when he had the idea for the film he knew “it has to be about the ‘new middle class’ that is rising. This is a very new contemporary theme about China.”
BEN CHACKO welcomes a masterful analysis that puts class struggle back at the heart of our understanding of China’s revolution
New research into mutations in sperm helps us better understand why they occur, while debunking a few myths in the process, write ROX MIDDLETON, LIAM SHAW and MIRIAM GAUNTLETT
200 years since the first dinosaur was described and 25 after its record-breaking predecessor, the BBC has brought back Walking with Dinosaurs. BEN CHACKO assesses what works and what doesn’t
