One of the most effective and realistic depictions of manual work in cinema is found in a scene in the avant-garde film Pravda (1970) by Jean-Luc Godard (officially by the Groupe Dziga Vertov), well-described in Monaco (1976). This is a short piece about the events in May 1968 in what was then Czechoslovakia. Whereas most…
A few weeks ago, I went in search of fish at Felixstowe (on the Suffolk coast, UK), took a wrong turn and found myself trying to drive into the Port. In the few minutes it took to ask for directions at the security gate (where the men were very friendly and helpful), several lorries came…
The Working Lives of Londoners is a series of photographs by Harriet Armstrong on display at City Hall (22 March to 7 May 2010) which shows Londoners ‘going about their daily routine in the capital’ (The Guardian). A selection of images was published in The Guardian in March, but more can be seen on Harriet…
Dawn and I recently watched Mesrine: Killer Instinct and Mesrine: Public Enemy Number 1, a semi-fictionalised account of the life of Jacques Mesrine, France’s most famous bank robber. Apart from a brief period working in an architect’s practice, Mesrine (played by Vincent Cassel) made a living from illegal activities. A professional criminal has to do…
Watch it and love it. As a story about gangs, drugs, inequality and social/institutional and legislative failure to protect poor communities, The Wire is astounding telly. In portraying the interconnections between the structures of power and the powerless – and showing how these are not always embedded in formal institutions – it comments