The second edition of the Festival du film celtique will take place at the Cité internationale des arts in Paris on the evenings of 11 and 12 April. Feature and short films from Scotland and Wales will be shown, with lots of opportunity to talk to filmmakers. There are a few invitations available. On Monday … Continue reading “Free Celtic Film Festival”
Magnum photographer Steve McCurry may not be a household name but his photos are instantly recognisable, especially one of a young Afghan girl taken in Pakistan where her family had taken refuge in 1984. A retrospective at the Musée Maillol in Paris takes visitors around the world in his footsteps, to India, Papua New Guinea, … Continue reading “Around the World in 150 Photos”
The Walk with Little Amal project aims to raise awareness of the plight of refugees and particularly refugee children. As Amal makes an 8,000 km journey across Europe on foot, the project hopes to help other children think about the issue, and they’ve provided lots of educational tools to help teachers explore the topic in … Continue reading “Teaching about Refugees”
This inspiring documentary features teen activists around the world who see a problem and try to fix it. From Malawi to Colorado they are fighting pollution, opposing child marriage, supporting education, freedom of speech and sustainable agriculture and demanding rights for the planet and indigenous people. Melati Wijsen and her sister founded Bye Bye Plastic … Continue reading “Bigger Than Us”
Little Amal is anything but small: she’s a giant puppet of a Syrian refugee girl making her way across Europe. The 3.5-metre-tall puppet began an 8,000 kilometre journey in Turkey on 27 July. After the south of France in September, she’ll be making stops across the north in October before embarking for the U.K. The … Continue reading “Walking Across Europe for Refugees”
The 2021 Nobel Prize for Literature has been awarded to Abdulrazak Gurnah from Tanzania, whose own experience of colonialism and exile have informed his ten novels as well as short stories and academic works. Gurnah was born in 1948 and brought in the island nation of Zanzibar off the coast of East Africa. At the … Continue reading “2021 Nobel Prize for Literature Turns the Spotlight on East Africa”
The Dinard British Film Festival is over for another year. But before it closed, the juries announced the winners of the various prizes. Here is a rundown. Limbo by Ben Sharrock won both the Hitchcock d’Or Ciné + and the feature-film audience prize. The film was selected for the 2020 Cannes Festival (which didn’t take … Continue reading “Winning Films at Dinard”
The Dinard British Film Festival is a wonderful event, and this year you can enjoy it even if you can’t make it to Normandy between 29 September and 3 October. A large number of the films selected are also available to watch online. There are dozens of films, fiction and documentary, in categories such as … Continue reading “Get Your Fill of British Film!”
20 June each year is United Nations World Refugee Day. In the UK, it is included in Refugee Week, 19-25 June. The UN refugee agency, the UNHCR, just released new figures showing that 2016 was yet another record year for refugees. The UNHCR’s Global Trends Report announces that 65.6 million people were displaced in 2016, … Continue reading “World Refugee Day”
This speech by UNHCR Special Envoy Angelina Jolie on World Refugee Day in June 2016 is a good introduction to the unprecedentedly large numbers of refugees in the world today, and the international summits and actions trying to come up with solutions. At 1’19, it works for practising listening comprehension for the Bac exam, on … Continue reading “Refugee Speech”