To rescue Kahlo from the clutches of the corporate art market, we need to acknowledge the overt and covert political dimensions of the work, demands GAVIN O’TOOLE
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Film round-up
Reviews of State Funeral, My New York Year, Rare Beasts, Spiral, Peter Rabbit 2: The Runaway and Army of the Dead
ENGAGING: My New York Year
If you can see past the relentless commodification you will be rewarded by enormously powerful work, suggests JENNY MITCHELL
CHRIS SEARLE revels in the one-off collaboration between an American polymath and a British Muslim, and detects the presence of their revolutionary forebear
GORDON PARSONS revels in an ebullient production of Shakespeare’s magical comedy
BRENT CUTLER welcomes a thoughtful analysis of the Erdogan regime, viewed through the evolving history of a neighbourhood in Istanbul
GORDON PARSONS regrets the price, but is dazzled by an outstandingly ambitious study of the way art restoration in particular, and culture in general was weaponised by the Nazis
State Funeral (PG)
Directed by Sergei Loznitsa
★★★
MOSTLY based on previously unseen archive footage, writer-director Sergei Loznitsa’s new montage film depicts the shock and awe, followed by mass hysteria, after the death of Joseph Stalin in March 1953.
The documentary follows the four days from the announcement of his demise, in excruciating detail over the radio, to his funeral in Red Square. It places you in the midst of the events as hundreds of thousands of people arrived from all corners of the USSR (and from abroad) to pay their respects to their former leader, whose rule resulted in the deaths of millions of Soviet citizens.
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