Tag: revolution

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Art Documentary Exhibitions Features Live Action Movies

Exhibition on Screen
Frida Kahlo
Special Edition
with new material from
The making of an icon

Frida Kahlo, The Two Fridas, 1939 © EXHIBITION ON SCREEN

Director – Ali Ray – 2020, 2026 – UK – Cert. U – 93m, 101m

*****

The tragic yet resonant life of Mexican artist Frida Kahlo, and her transformation into a modern, cultural icon – out in UK cinemas from Tuesday, May 19th

As dour piano chords play, a title announces that Frida Kahlo held only three solo exhibitions in her lifetime. This is contrasted with an auction where “one of her most complex self portraits” The Dream (The Bed) / El Sueño (La Cama) (1940) auctions for a starting price of $22m and selling for $47m. As of November 2025, this was the highest ever value for a work by a female artist achieved at an auction.

Now, in 2026, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston and the Tate Modern, London collaborate on a major exhibition entitled Frida: the making of an icon, opening on Friday, June 19th at the Tate. Exhibition on Screen’s Special Edition of their 2020 film concludes with ten minutes of newly shot footage of that exhibition.

Frida works at a writing desk as she (voice: Diana Bermudez) reads the latter she is composing. You notice the ornate rings on her fingers, her lavish earrings, the green and yellow jungle design of her print dress as she talks about “too much pain… It will take me years to get out of this mess I have in my head.… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

Two Prosecutors
(Zwei Staatsanwälte)

Director – Sergei Loznitsa – 2025 – France, Germany, Romania, Latvia, Netherlands, Lithuania – Cert. 12A – 118m

****1/2

Stalinist Russia, 1937. A young, idealistic prosecutor takes up the case of an unjustly imprisoned, political prisoner – out in UK cinemas on Friday, March 27th

A prison yard. Impassive guards. Inmates on scaffolding work at plastering the exterior wall. A man from a new prisoner detail is given a sack of letters and locked in a cell with a stove. He must burn the letters.

Given two matches, he reads some of the letters before incineration. One is written in blood from an inmate named Stepniak requesting a visit from a prosecutor. 

The young, fresh faced prosecutor Kornev (Alexander Kuznetsov) arrives at the prison to see the governor. He is seen instead to the duty assistant (Andria Keiss). 

The prosecutor is received, but the interviewing duty assistant lives in a different world. The prison staff live in a world where the apple cart is never to be upset and an easy life is paramount. They laugh uproariously at the current joke doing the rounds about a political celebrity being imprisoned both before and after the Revolution. 

They do their jobs efficiently, but woe beside interfering busybodies.… Read the rest

Categories
Art Features Live Action Movies

Snowpiercer
(Seolgungnyeolcha,
설국열차)

Director – Bong Joon Ho – 2013 – South Korea – Cert. 15 – 126m

South Korean director Bong Joon Ho’s Snowpiercer (2013), which never had a theatrical release in the UK during its original, international run, finally appears in the UK on home video. Described as “High Rise on a train” by Mark Kermode, it’s an uncompromising dystopian vision, and we can safely attribute its appearance on Blu-ray to a double whammy – Bong’s Oscar-winning box-office hit Parasite, and the broadcast this month of the long-delayed Snowpiercer TV series.

An ecological catastrophe has turned the Earth into a frozen wasteland. The only people still alive are those on a train annually circling the globe. Some are there because they’re rich, others because they were lucky enough to get on board. The rich live in luxury at the front while the poor are kept in squalor at the back. Two members of the lower orders lead a revolt, travelling the length of the train to eventually confront the train’s wealthy industrialist creator. Like the more complex Parasite, it pits ordinary people against wealthy elites.

I review Snowpiercer for All The Anime.