Reviews of Habibi Funk 031, Kayatibu, and The Good Ones
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Tensions in the Chinese middle class
ANGUS REID speaks to Lin Jianjie about his debut feature Brief History of a Family
FORMALITY AND RETICENCE: (L to R) Guo Keyu, Zu Feng, Lin Muran, Sun Xilun
[Courtesy of Blue Finch Film Releasing]
SIMON DUFF relishes the cross contamination of Damien Hirst’s greatest hits by street artists from France and the US
In view of the grooming gangs inquiry, SIMON PARSONS feels the relevance of this powerful examination of trauma suffered at Medomsley Youth Detention Centre
JOHN GREEN doubts the motivations of a US war photographer who never questions why, or for whom, she is producing images of imperialist conflict
MARIA DUARTE reviews Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere, Hedda, The Mastermind, and Regretting You
TONY CONWAY welcomes a thrilling and concise history of Hope not Hate, that is also a manual full of tactical advice
PAUL DONOVAN welcomes an inspiring account of living with deafness that has important lessons for the treatment of deaf people in today’s UK
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.”
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