Culture

  • Is Venezuela taking the Cuban road?

    I was a participant in the Australia-Venezuela Solidarity Network brigade to Venezuela in December 2006. I was lucky enough to squeeze into the packed presidential palace compound when the official national elections results confirmed an overwhelming victory for socialist President Hugo Chavez.

  • Identity card

    Mahmoud Darwish, the iconic Palestinian poet passed away on 9 August in Houston, Texas, at the age of 67 following unsuccessful heart bypass surgery. "Identity Card", was published in his first collection of poetry, Leaves of Olives published in

  • 'Do you want to play again?'

    War Games
    Directed by John Badham, Written by Lawrence Lasker & Walter Parkes
    With Matthew Broderick & Ally Sheedy
    25th anniversary DVD release

  • The Bones of September

    Two vast and trunkless legs of steel Like silent Pharaohs over Wall Street stood Scraping the vast canvas of immortality @poetry = How many died erecting those towers: Welders of iron, exoskeletal beams? Manhattan is missing her two front

  • Portraits of a nation

    Tibet: A precious Human Life
    By Damon Annison
    Distributed by Brumby Books, $35 (pb)

  • Too hot for Hollywood

    Hollywood’s Censor: Joseph I. Breen & The Production Code Administration
    By Thomas Doherty
    Columbia University Press, 2007
    427 pages, $49.95 (hb)

  • On the box

    Gagadju: Timeless Land — Describes how Bininj and Mungguy cultures and customary laws underpin all tourism decisions in Kakadu. ABC, Sunday, September 14, 1.30pm. The Russian Revolution in Colour: Freedom and Hope — Explores the first four

  • Artists vs Hollywood fatcats

    Those who’ve gone to see an independent film lately might be familiar with an ad that warns against movie pirating. According to this ad, consumers (understandably sick of being gouged $14 to catch a movie) who download and burn movies are undermining the ability of the Australian film industry to grow and survive.

  • The people who ended 'Jim Crow'

    The Thunder of Angels: The Montgomery Bus Boycott & the People Who Broke the Back of Jim Crow
    By Donnie Williams with Wayne Greenshaw
    Lawrence Hill Books, 2007
    293 pages, $23.95 (pb)