A reflection on life and the arts from a progressive perspective. Here you will find social commentary on movies, the performing arts, issues of cultural significance and life in general.
Fazila Farouk - The Grahamstown National Arts Festival underscored, in its totality, the fact that apartheid's social, economic and cultural biases have taken a confident stride into post-apartheid South Africa.
Dale T. McKinley - End Game gives absolutely no real agency to the millions of South Africans who fought on the ground against the apartheid regime. Instead, it glamourises the role of a few 'great men'.
Billy Wharton - Connie Field's "Have You Heard from Johannesburg" has a serious ambition - to tell the complete story of the South African anti-apartheid movement from an international perspective.
The Hurt Locker: An Oscar for America's Hubris
Robert Scheer - The "Hurt Locker" is an endorsement of the politically chauvinistic view that the world is a stage upon which Americans get to deal with their demons no matter the consequence for others.
The Activist Actor, Not the Celebrity Cause
Fazila Farouk - Beyond the famous faces supporting glamorous 'celebrity causes', Hollywood also has a surprisingly radical group of activist-actors supporting grassroots issues and engaged in advocacy.
Avatar: A Humanist Call From Mt. Hollywood
Gilad Atzmon - Avatar may well be the biggest anti-war film of all time. It stands against everything the West is identified with. It puts Wolfowitz, Blair and Bush on trial without even mentioning their names.
Richard Pithouse - Shacks in Jo'burg have always housed aliens. Apartheid turned black South Africans into aliens in their own country. In democratic South Africa we turned Mozambicans and Zimbabweans into aliens.
The Weakening of Women's Chances for Economic Equity - The broad context is that African women pay the price for failing states and a hostile political economy that deepens poverty and widens inequalities in many societies of the global South.
Slavoj Zizek: How Corporations Make Profits by Associating Themselves with Charitable Causes - In this Royal Society for the Encouragement of the Arts (RSA) animated video, Slovenian philosopher, Slavoj Zizek, investigates the ethical implications of charitable giving, as suggested by big business. Zizek draws attention to an important debate while the creative genius of the RSA illustrators is enormously entertaining to watch.
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