Palestine Film Festival 2013

The 2013 London Palestine Film Festival showed 38 works by Palestianian and international artists over a two week period at the Barbican and UCL.

I managed to get along to the following:

Blood of the Condor - billed as 'beyond Palestine' this is from the 1960's Bolivia and is filmed on crackly old 16mm. Seen as one of the classic's of '60's anticolonial cinema and a call for anticolnial revolution it tells the story of a young man trying to obtain a blood transfusion for his brother who was injured by government forces. During this search he uncovers a covert U.S. Peace Corps programme aimed at sterilising the indigenous poor.

The Last Friday - Set in Ammam, Jordan Youssef, a divorced taxi-driver, settles into a downbeat life until he is diagnosed in need of costly surgery. He is then compelled to take some decisions about his relationship with his ex-wife and son. A sombre but always enjoyable film.

The Stones Cry Out + Resistance Recipes - 'Stones' is a moving film about the centrality of Christians in Palestine throughout history. Covering the period from 1948 to the present day it explores the specific challenges they face today. It is often said that the Israeli/Palestinian problem is one of Jew against Muslim, funnily enough this film's central message, even though it is about Christians, is to refute that stance, it is a political problem about right and wrong.
Resistance Recipes as a documentary short about various culinary and agricultural projects inspired by the resistance. An account of a man and his family eco-farming their land with the most magnificient views but with the Israeli settlement land-grabs always in mind and view and another about a women's food cooperative were inspiring and engrossing at the same time.

David Bailey's East End Faces - William Morris Gallery, E17

A small, one roomed exhibition featuring some of David Bailey's photo's of London't East End in the 1960's. The portraits really capture some of the characters of the era, Bailey of course was famously born and raised just down the road from the gallery and as he says 'London's East End is in my DNA'.

I would recommend a look round the rest of the galley as well, especially if you haven't visited since it was renovated in 2012. It is a well deserved finalist in the Museum of the Year 2013 competition and all free to get in.

Gert & Uwe Tobias - Whitechapel Art Gallery

Gert & Uwe Tobias are identical twins born in Transylvania, Romania in 1973, they moved to Germany in 1985, aged 12. I found this exhibition hard to catagorise in my mind, I couldn't even work out if I liked it at first. It's in one galley of the Whitechapel and I just kept wandering round and round trying to work it out, wanting to look and re-look but not wanting to leave. It draws on modernist geometric abstraction which is what I was first drawn to and maybe some communist influence from their early life which I also find interesting but there's also something kinda surrealist about the works I think. The Tobias' work in various mediums from drawing to ceramics, they make huge canvas' and also many smaller works, often using the print of a typewriter...you have to see it really. I've been twice and as I sit here writing this I want to go again, the exhibition runs until 14 June 2013, I recommend you see it if you can and even better it's free to get in!