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The threatening teddy bear in the Home Office
“The woman I’m about to interview is from The Philippines, which is considered a safe country,” explains the Home Office interviewer, “so see what you think - and don’t be too soft. We have a bit of a joke in the office — if you’re seen as too soft you’ll find the office teddy bear on your desk.”
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Serious journalism - or just ‘a spoonful of Muslim’?
Jihad is a mid-20s Brit of South Asian origin. He wants to be a journalist. But his career never takes off (“I got nothing to show for it”) until he enters a competition.
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A glimpse into the lives of extraordinary ordinary Iraqis
During the 1991 Gulf War Maysoon Pachachi was in London and recalls that “watching the news, I never saw one ordinary Iraqi person on screen. They were absent.”
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Sudan mystery puts racism in the spotlight
Goodbye Julia Is perfect proof that the personal is political.
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‘How was my father killed?’, a mother is asked
A teacher asks his young class what what they should model today. A tank, suggests one. A rifle, says another. “No,” responds the teacher, “I don’t like objects of war.”
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The Douala seamstress who’s the real action hero
You want an action movie? Forget Superman or Wonder Woman. Watch Mambar Pierrette.
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Like mixing a movie on the Titanic
It could have been bad taste to make a film about making a film at the time of the cataclysmic 2020 chemical explosion in Beirut that killed 218, injured 7,000, caused $15 billion property damage, and made about 300,000 people homeless.
Nine vision of hell in Iran - and elsewhere
Terrestrial Verses is a vivid depiction of what happens when bureaucrats and managers have arbitrary power over individuals. It is like nine visions of personal hell.
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When the Butterfly bites
It starts with a production of Puccini’s Madam Butterfly more than a century ago: the handsome visiting white US military officer and the pliant, Asian doll-woman.
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The Syrian refugees and the semi-derelict pub
The Old Oak is a film about what happens when Syrian refugees move into a run-down, dead-on-its-feet north-east English town.
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Boy to girl, devout follower to assassin: the Nathuram Godse story
So, Mahatma Gandhi was murdered because his assassin was brought up as a girl to appease the Gods and was symbolically killing the father who had metaphorically castrated him?
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Life and death in a container on the move
Sorry We Didn't Die at Sea is uncategorisable but funny and entertaining.
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Rough life in an African illiberal democracy
Bobi Wine: Ghetto President pitches you face-to-face with the rough and tumble of Uganda’s political and election battles as pop star-turned-MP Robert Kyagulanyi takes on the country’s 36-year dictatorship.
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Zia Ahmed takes a class blast at repression in Britain
Brassic FM is a two-barrel blast at the authorities trying to police aspects of working-class British cultural life.
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Celebrating the Peckham-Lagos connection
Lagos Peckham Repeat: Pilgrimage to the Lakes is full of energy, humour and invention - just like the thousands of Nigerians in the south London district of Peckham, part of 12,000 Nigerians in the borough of Southwark.
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Word-Play walks the talk
Extraordinarily, while Rabiah Hussain was writing her new play, a brain tumour attacked her ability to communicate. Extraordinary, because Word-Play is about language.
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Is it to be African American or Critical Whiteness Studies?
Kwame Kwei-Armah has compared living with his Grenada-born parents in Britain to existing with two types of theatre: he would be serving rum to his father and his pals, while his mother was hosting church meetings in the living-room. His new play is also like two types of theatre.
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Playlists light the blue touch paper in a political Hong Kong romcom
A Playlist for the Revolution at the Bush Theatre is a blast.
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Photography exhibition fit for African monarchs
From the moment you enter A World In Common: Contemporary African Photography, you know you’re in for something a little different.
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British-Asian cricket prodigy finds himself on a sticky wicket
The recent blistering report on racism, sexism and elitism in English cricket reinforces Duck’s Arcola Theatre depiction of the camouflaged prejudice behind the crushing of a British Muslim schoolboy’s prodigious sporting talent.