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On the BBC website neither the main page nor even the UK news page report the anti far right Together march that took place in London today.
You have to filter all the way to England.
Mind you, that’s better than they did for Trans Pride which only showed on the London page.
A bit of a difference from how they covered the far right’s marches last year?
#bbc #bbcnews #FarRight #mediabias #london #ukpolitics
Replying to
@ancientsounds@mastodonapp.uk We used to dance around a maypole when I was a kid in the north of England (1970s). It was part of a May Day festival. Lots of fun although you’re basically just skipping round in circles from what I can recall.
#RIP Asha Bhosle. What a singer!
I’ll never forget watching her perform live at the South Bank Centre in around 2011. Already in her late 70s she put younger singers to shame with her energy.
And that charisma! A diva who had every right to be a diva.
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2026/apr/12/indian-singer-asha-bhosle-dies-aged-92
#AshaBhosle
Watched ‘Flashdance’ with a mate a while back. First time I’ve seen the film since it came out in the mid-80s.
And you know - yes, the storyline is implausible and the characters are cliches, but it’s loads of fun and some of the dancing is fabulous (although you don’t want to look too closely or the editing is screamingly obvious).
I’ve seen interviews where dancers said ‘Flashdance’ was what inspired them to start dancing.
Best of all is the soundtrack. Some absolute bangers on it!
And the fact that it was a low budget film with no real stars. The studio hadn’t expected it to be a huge hit.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flashdance
#Flashdance #JenniferBeals #MichaelNouri #IreneCara #MarineJehan #GiorgioMoroder #80scinema #cinema #80spop #80smusic #dance
Can you imagine a film about lesbian nuns in 1950s Japan? Look no further than this year’s BFI Flare festival.
‘Impure Nuns’ (x) is a cheap flick from Japan’s Shin-Tōhō studio. Released in 1958 it tells the story of a young Catholic woman who enters a convent after a rape & abortion. Some years on, after becoming a model nun, she seduced by a wild young novice and her life slowly unravels.
The film is mad, camp as hell, disturbing in its treatment of rape; but at times also beautiful and romantic. It bombed on release as it wasn’t sexually explicit enough for its intended male audience but was too obviously intended as semi-porn to be remarketed to a female audience (they did try).
The director was Michiyoshi Doi and it starred Miyuki Takakura as Sister Eri and Mayumi Ōzora as the young novice Anna.
https://whatson.bfi.org.uk/flare/Online/default.asp?BOparam::WScontent::loadArticle::permalink=impure-nuns-flare26
#土居通芳 #高倉みゆき #大空眞弓 #新東宝株式会社 #shintoho #michiyoshidoi #miyukitakakura #mayumiozora #bfiflare #lgbtq #lesbian #nun #japanesecinema #japan #日本🇯🇵 #queercinema
Kumiko Ueda, Japanese theatre director (ex-Takarazuka) reflects on the relationship between the audience and the performance in this fascinating blog post.
She was directing Hamlet at the time and so she also looks at what we know about Shakespeare’s audiences - the people who saw the plays at the Globe Theatre in the late 16th/early 17th century.
And she points to how fragmented and segmented audiences have become and the difficulties that creates.
The post is in Japanese but if you use Chrome’s translate option, you get a very readable English version (something that doesn’t always happen with machine translations from Japanese).
https://note.com/kumiko_ueda/n/n3c9e34e8b30b
#上田久美子 #宝塚 #KumikoUeda #Takarazuka #theatre #JapaneseTheatre #Shakespeare #Hamlet #GlobeTheatre #Japan #日本🇯🇵 #ShakespeareInJapan
Are there any recordings of (the great actress) Katharine Cornell apart from her recitals of poems by Elizabeth Barrett Browning?
Her voice and her command of it are things of wonder.
It seems wrong - I can’t think of how to put it - that so little remains.
#KatharineCornell #greatactors #ElizabethBarrettBrowning #poetry #theatre #America #20thCActors
Wandering the graveyard of dead Japanese words - fascinating article about ‘shigo’, words that have ‘died’.
Some words get worn out, others die young.
https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20260312/p2a/00m/0op/044000c
#shigo #deadwords #japanese #damianflanagan #japan #日本語 #日本🇯🇵 #死語 #language #languagechange
New film about the infamous “Blue Boy” trial which ‘effectively outlawed gender reassignment surgery in Japan until 1998’.
The film features trans actors and the director, Kasho Iizuka, is a trans man.
It’s interesting what he says about how trans women in 1960s Japan had to ‘overexpress’ femininity.
This requirement to hyperconform to gender stereotypes was still very much the case for trans men & women in the 1990s when I transitioned here in the UK.
The film is showing in Manchester and will be on at the ICA in London on Friday 13th Feb.
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2026/feb/12/blue-boy-trial-japan-trans-history-kasho-iizuka
#KashoIizuka #trans #transman #transwoman #japan #lgbtq #queer #queercinema #日本🇯🇵 #トランスジェンダー #Manchester #ICA #BlueBoyTrial
Tokyo court says Japanese constitution does NOT give a right to equal marriage. A great shame. Previous courts have been more favourable.
OTOH, I do think it's better on the whole to get an explicit buy-in to equal marriage. This 'constitution' strategy (re-interpreting a document that clearly wasn't written with the intention of providing for equal marriage) seems very vulnerable going forward.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/clyz7njqwvvo
#japan #lgbtq #equalmarriage #samesexmarriage #samegendermarriage #japanlgbt
My Mum & Dad are watching a programme about country life, featuring shire horses.
I love shire horses.
A fella down the road from us kept some in a field nearby when I was growing up. Sometimes he’d let us kids have a ride on their backs. They had such lovely calm and accepting temperaments. You felt safe and as glorious as a king up there.
#shirehorses #horses
Works by Yuki Katsura (#桂ゆき) at the Women Artists & Global Abstraction 1940-70 exhibition yesterday at the Whitechapel Gallery
#YukiKatsura #art #abstractart #Japan #JapaneseArt #20thCArt #FemaleArtist
They did it again! The Lionesses won the Euros!
God knows it often felt like the Lionesses were getting through this tournament by the skin of their teeth, but what an achievement!
And what a nail-biting finale! Even watching the penalties on iPlayer now it's all over I get nervous.
#Lionesses #euros2025 #euros2025finals #England #womensfootball#ChloeKelly #NiamhCharles #AlexGreenwood #LucyBronze #AlessiaRusso #KeiraWalsh #BethMead ... and ALL the rest of the team!
And, above all, #SarinaWiegman
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/articles/c4g0q076591o
Oh no! Not Glenda Jackson!
And after her amazing return to acting. She was unforgettable as King Lear. To think she'd been away from the stage (and from acting) for a quarter of a century.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-65916692
#RIP #GlendaJackson #GreatActors #Theatre #UK #KingLear #Wirral
It is the 98th anniversary of the birth of the illustrator & writer Edward Gorey today! The author of ‘The Doubtful Guest’. What a book!
#EdwardGorey #TheDoubtfulGuest
Today marks the 130th anniversary of the birth of Conrad Veidt, great German actor and anti-Nazi.
He was brilliant in silent movies (I love Weimar Cinema!) but also in talkies too.
Sadly, he was limited in his speaking roles, once he left Germany, by his strong German accent.
In the ‘Cabinet of Doctor Caligari’ he somehow has to make a zombie soulful.
#ConradVeidt #WeimarCinema #GermanCinema #SilentMovies #GreatActor #EarlyCinema #1920sfilm #AntiNazi #Germany #talkies
https://youtu.be/IAtpxqajFak
For anyone who is ex-Twitter and who used to encounter JK Rowling’s tweets there (and I didn’t even follow her), reading the BBC’s representation of her attitude to trans people is like entering a parallel universe.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-64572328
#trans #JKRowling #BBC #Twitter #tweets
I totally agree with Sally Wainwright about the beauty of writing that is grounded in a place, rather than bland & generic to make it easier to market.
https://www.ft.com/content/7792625d-ff25-45c2-818a-3a797eb3beed#SallyWainwright #HappyValley #GentlemanJack #LastTangoInHalifax #Yorkshire #NorthernEngland #TVdrama
Replying to
@noondlyt@hellions.cloud Probably because they have friends or family who only communicate via it or because they belong to a group that uses it. Most people I know who still use it do so for those reasons.
I'd been under the impression that the Takarazuka performance in July 1994 was my first proper theatre experience, but this Turgenev play was in Feb/Mar 1994, so came before it.
I love Helen Mirren (and had the most massive crush on her at the time) but I don't recall being blown away by 'A Month In The Country'.
Joseph Fiennes kept fiddling with his sleeve. I'd forgotten John Hurt was even in it.
https://www.helen-mirren.net/projects/1994amonthinthecountry/#HelenMirren #Takarazuka #宝塚 #theatre #Turgenev #London #londontheatre #JosephFiennes #JohnHurt
Replying to
@PoliceStateUK@mastodon.me.uk What’s even more disgusting is that as a group Sikhs are very committed to doing their bit for society. I remember one year - I think it was 2014 - when there was flooding in rural areas of England and Sikh groups went to help the local people.
Another look at the ONS data on gender and sexual orientation:
“London also had higher proportions of people identifying as transgender men (0.16%) and trans women (0.16%) when compared with the rest of England and Wales.”
Gosh. No wonder we're seen as such a threat. THREE in every 2,000 people. Fewer than that outside London.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-64184736#Census21 #ONS #gender #London #transgender #trans
Replying to on mstdn.games
@Melezioh@mstdn.games I hate snow! In the UK it invariably melts and refreezes as ice. The pavements where I live are never gritted and my road is on a hill. I hope your snow thaws soon - if it hasn’t already.
Isn’t there an episode of a 70s/early 80s TV series (British) in which the villains have discovered a way to turn old men back into (beautiful) young men who fight as soldiers for them… reverting to old men when they die?
They are Nazis trying to bring Hitler back to life I think.
#70sTV #BritishTV
“Elis Regina is … one of the last unknown treasure troves of the 20th century that the world could discover … and she’s just one click away,”
Elis Regina was incredible. A ‘skin voice’.
I came across her on a Brazilian music compilation in 1992 and it was instant love. If it takes #AI and a #Volkswagen advert to bring her to the rest of the world, so be it.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jul/14/brazil-singer-elis-regina-artificial-intelligence-volkswagen
#ElisRegina #Brazil #GreatSingers #mpb #femalevocalists #adverts
Not sure how much it's a case of women being more liberal than men over issues like immigration. I suspect it’s more that they understand that their own rights are at risk if they back illiberal trends.
During the run up to the Brexit referendum I heard some people from ethnic minorities express hostility to the EU and some migrants. But they voted Remain because they perceived the Brexiteers as hostile to them too.
Complacency about this is dangerous. There is usually a weak spot. The political lesbians who found themselves marginalised in the lesbian community became the vanguard of the anti-trans camp.
More generally, when people want change but don't know what change they want or need (and also fear it) they are dangerous.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cy082dn7rkqo
#Germany #LGBTQ #youngpeople #Brexit #immigration #youngmen
Replying to on beige.party
@OddJob@beige.party Mick and Raksha were mine, but Guy and Phil are fine choices too.
A bit late but Friday was the 124th anniversary of the birth of Doris Speed (Annie Walker, the original landlady of the Rover's in Coronation Street).
Came across this excellent tribute programme, broadcast after her death in 1994. That regal manner and dry wit - fabulous. I love the bit where she goes as Queen Elizabeth I to a fancy dress party.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p3V6enl6pkw#DorisSpeed #AnnieWalker #Corrie #BritishTV #SoapOpera #CoronationStreet #OldBritishTV
Replying to
One difference I picked up on is how strong & developed the female (#dan) characters are. Unlike #musumeyaku they don’t just exist to help the male (#sang) characters shine.
The music, singing styles and formal stylised acting take a lot of getting used to and at first I thought the barriers were too high. But there came a point where it hit me. I thought: this is so beautiful & powerful.
#YueOpera #CantoneseOpera
#Theatre performance of the year was definitely Kathryn Hunter as #KingLear at the #Globe this summer. And I so nearly didn’t go as I wasn’t in the mood for crowds or… anything really. I had forgotten who was in the title role and couldn’t work out if it was a tiny man…? Truly one of those nights when you marvel: ‘I was here.’ https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2022/jun/19/king-lear-review-shakespeares-globe-kathryn-hunter #Shakespeare #KathrynHunter
I always see Mira Anju (#安寿ミラ) as a woman but that’s fine by me! Maybe I appreciate the otokoyaku (male role players) in a different way from Japanese audiences. It doesn’t matter, the magic still works. And what magic it is!
http://b23.tv/49hs0PF#Takarazuka #宝塚 #Japan #otokoyaku
Replying to on mstdn.games
@Melezioh@mstdn.games Let’s face it these are anxious times. One source of anxiety feeds another. I should think you’re past the point of fistulas forming now? They normally occur soon after surgery.
Replying to on mastodon.online
@tiamat271@mastodon.online If you are up for ‘classic’ era writers, ER Punshon is one I’d recommend.
Yesterday I was at a BFI event hosted by Mark Kermode in memory of the film director Terence Davies.
These things can end up being lots of speechifying, but this was fabulous.
Mark was a brilliant host - passionate about Terence’s work but also genuinely interested in what others had to say.
And the guests were great. They ranged from actors and crew who’d worked on the films to the guys from Hurricane Films who got Terence back making movies again, his personal trainer-turned-manager and a neighbour who became a close friend during lockdown and ended up the co-executor of his estate.
I learnt a lot more about the man and his working methods.
We also got to watch clips from some of the films and saw a short with Terence’s poetry being read by Simon Russell Beale.
#TerenceDavies #MarkKermode #BFI #SimonRussellBeale #ukfilm #London #Liverpool #Mistley #cinema #HurricaneFilms
No matter how many times I watch Yam Kim-Fai (#任劍輝), I can’t see ‘him’ as a woman. It fascinates me.
Pak Suet-Sin (#白雪仙) fascinates me full stop.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=x3FMOYHyZek&feature=share #YamKimFai #PakSuetSin #CantoneseOpera #HongKong #ChineseOpera
帝女花之迎鳳 (高清電影版本) -任劍輝，白雪仙，陳好逑，歐陽儉，陸飛鴻。
MzVee - so talented and the one of the sexiest voices I’ve ever heard.
https://open.spotify.com/track/3RxKUI1BK2CEuTWTBYuHAU?si=zspQnFSRQqK_MQ6pplUoLA#MzVee #FemaleVocalists #Ghana #Africa
These illegal immigrants and their woke friends…
#PaddingtonBear #WaterlooStation #SouthBankCentre #Peru #London #woke #immigration #Londoners #Migrants
Desmond Morris has died. I wonder how many people still remember him?
‘The Naked Ape’ was sexist of course and simplistic, but one thing it taught me, reading it in my early teens back in the 80s, is that there’s nothing shameful about acknowledging that as humans we are animals.
Replying to on chaos.social
@fnwbr@chaos.social @nixCraft@mastodon.social Although other parts of the article quote analysts being cautiously positive about its impact on productivity in the most recent quarter and the general thrust seems to be that significant productivity gains may be more in the longer rather than shorter term. I’m not a lover of AI, but that is what the article is saying.
The lyrics of ‘Spring, Spring, Spring’ as sung by Bing Crosby and Fred Astaire are insane - gloriously insane.
From ‘While there's no antelope who feels that he can't elope’ to ‘Each cocoon has a tenant, so they hung out a pennant’ to ‘To itself, each amoeba softly croons, "Ach, du Lieber"’ and ‘While the proud little termite feels as large as a worm might’… those rhymes!
https://www.musixmatch.com/lyrics/Bing-Crosby-Fred-Astaire/Spring-Spring-Spring
#SpringSpringSpring #BingCrosby #FredAstaire #JohnnyMercer #spring #printemps #antelope #cocoon #amoeba #termite #worm #songlyrics #tenant #pennant #elope #rhymes
So... who's surprised? Racism, misogyny, xenophobia, islamophobia in the Met (London Metropolitan Police).
It's still upsetting and depressing though.
And the sad thing is there are lots of decent police officers and they end up getting tarred with the same brush.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cvgq06d44jyo
#met #metpolice #racism #misogyny #islamophobia #domesticviolence #sexism #sexualviolence #xenophobia
Nezhat Amiri, Iran’s only female orchestral conductor and her fight to conduct.
This article is from 8 years ago.
Sadly I can’t find anything more recent.
I hope she’s conducted other performances since then.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/feb/20/the-conductor-smashing-iranian-taboos-over-women-and-music
#NezhatAmiri #Iran #classicalMusic #femaleconductor #genderpolitics #Tehran #MarinAlsop #ParvizMansouri #MortezaHannaneh #orchestra #IranianMusic #PersianClassicalMusic
There are some situations where the very act of making a film or TV series seems heroic. This director Ahmed Farah in Somalia is an example.
Haifaa Al-Mansour, who made 'Wadjda' in Saudi Arabia is another. A female film director in a country where women couldn't even drive. For outdoor scenes, She had to direct hidden inside a van.
No idea what the Somali TV series is like, but Wadjda's a lovely film.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-65390047
#AhmedFarah #HaifaaAlMansour #filmdirectors #film #Somalia #SaudiArabia #Wadjda #femalefilmdirector
Thank god! Signs that the lights are coming on re Palantir and the NHS.
‘a growing recognition that the issue of Palantir and potential reputation risk had moved beyond the Labour left and Greens, who have led criticism in the past’
‘When you look at some of the things Palantir’s leaders have said in the States, when you look at their political views and their outlook … If you were to put [Thiel] and some of those Palantir bosses on the political spectrum in the UK, they would be well off to the right of even Kemi Badenoch’s Conservative party’
Let’s get them out of our data
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/mar/31/palantir-uk-boss-louis-mosley-ministers-nhs-contract
#nhs #palantir #peterthiel #wesstreeting #nationalhealthservice #health #uk #guardian #ukpolitics #data #ai