Culture

woman in a taxi with male driver

Jim McIlroy reviews Damage, written and directed by Australian filmmaker Madeleine Blackwell, which is a moving allegory about the destruction caused by war and the increasing alienation suffered by an elderly woman in a capitalist society abandoning those in need.

people standing outside a building

An eager audience was treated to the award-winning documentary Palestine Under Siege by filmmakers Jill Hickson and John Reynolds in Gadigal/Sydney, reports Jepke Goudsmit.

Protest albums from February 2024

Mat Ward looks back at February's political news and the best new music that related to it.

DJ deck with dove of peace

With the escalating conflict in Gaza, the disproportionate violence and ongoing occupation of Palestine, a group of DJs, and performers in Sydney started talking about ways they could demonstrate their solidarity with people feeling the pain of war, reports Kerry Smith.

Film director Ken Loach on set

Darren Saffin reviews Ken Loach's film The Old Oak, which is set in a dying northern English village following the arrival of Syrian refugee families.

book cover, city scape

Bill Nevins revews Paul Lynch’s Booker Prize-winning novel, set in a near-future Ireland, where fascists have come to power.

woman smiling

Poetry by Tamara Pearson.

book cover

John Tully reviews Boris Frankel's memoir, which recounts his family's eye-opening experience emigrating from Australia to the Soviet Union in 1956.

two book covers

February 24 marks the two-year anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Ever since the war began it has generated debate on the left, which is why these two new works reflecting on the conflict are essential reading, writes Federico Fuentes.

book cover, man's face

Derek Wall reviews Hall Greenland’s biography of Michel Pablo, an Egyptian-born Greek revolutionary leader.

two sister's bodies wrapped in cloth

Stuart Rees responds to months of genocide in Gaza and the West Bank.

book cover, refugees fleeing in 1948

Lenni Brenner's edited volume, 51 Documents: Zionist Collaboration With the Nazis is important reading today in the context of the United States-backed Israeli genocidal war in Gaza, writes Barry Sheppard.