Mainstream film criticism, an unappetizing stew of the shallow and the impressionistic, is in dire straits. An honourable exception is A. S. Hamrah and the latest collection of his reviews, “Algorithm of the night: Film writing, 2019-2025”, is warmly welcomed.   Sean Sheehan   Part of the problem, of course, […]

Since her days working as an assistant to Graciela Iturbide – and now her artistic heir – Maya Goded has emerged as a vital figure in Mexican photography and documentary film making. “The serpent’s trail”, a precious and aesthetically pleasurable publication, is a work of memory and resistance.   Sean […]

There are countless ways of looking at London and two new books narrow the focus by taking the idea of looking in more of a literal than a metaphorical sense: a cartographic approach, mapping the city through its boroughs; and a street-photography journey across the metropolis.   Sean Sheehan   […]

Hard power deploys brute force or makes manifest its capacity and willingness to do so. The soft power of storytelling does not command and coerce in this way but exerts its own form of dominance through its ability to script a particular perspective.   Sean Sheehan   Through the control […]

Israel’s genocide is being enacted on more than one front. The most brutal and horrendous way is by means of physical slaughter, evoking the Nazi genocide, and this is accompanied, in both Gaza and the Occupied Territories, by creating a new geography designed to replace Palestine and eradicate its cultural […]