arts
The Handmaid’s Tale - too real to be fictional
As a woman, The Handmaid’s Tale hits a little too close to home. The series, adapted from the book of the same title by Margaret Atwood, contains social commentary so beautifully and frighteningly woven into every episode, the audience is almost always left with something to reflect on once the credits roll.
11.2024 | Tendani Mulaudzi
Faking it: The story special effects
You really can’t talk about movies without talking about special effects, and you can’t talk about special effects without talking about horror films.
10.2024 | Beth Brunnig
Book Review: Harlem Shuffle by Colson Whitehead
Inspiration can strike at any moment. For two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning author Colson Whitehead it was a playlist from a friend. More specifically, it was the song “Harlem Shuffle” that gave him the title for his novel, which debuted at number three on The New York Times fiction bestseller list and was named by Barack Obama as one of his favourite books of 2021.
06.2023 | Eugene Yiga
A (black) mirror to the metaverse
After a break of more than four years, season six of Black Mirror is finally here. As is typically the case for this award-winning television series, the episodes take a closer and darker look at society’s dystopian side, but this time, they do so in a new way.
11.2023 | Eugene Yiga
Guernica revisited – the resonance of Picasso’s masterpiece in today’s world
Fifty years after his death, Pablo Picasso remains one of the most prolific artists in the world, having created around 25 000 works throughout his life.
11.2023 | Eugene Yiga
African animation is catching global attention
For the past few years, we’ve seen an increased global interest and demand in African stories, works and the creatives behind the work.
04.2024 | Rebone Masemola
Why Korean Dramas are better than Hollywood Dramas
I was introduced to K-dramas by a friend of mine last year, but I wasn’t ready. Besides the language barrier and the tiredness from reading the subtitles, how would you understand all the different cultural nuances? Nope, not doing that, I decided.
09.2022 | Seymone Leigh Moodley
They laughed when I sat down at the piano, but when I started to play!
The rise of social media is only the latest Golden Gun for advertisers, and already they are looking for a new one.
03.2022 | Peter Dearlove
Creativity Series part 3: There’s an algorithm for everything
Up until now, this series has established that there has been a tendency to regard creativity as the product of individual genius whose great cognitive capacities alone are responsible for the products that they create.
03.2022 | Lee Blake
Creativity series part 2: An evolving concept
The big question posed in the previous article was: “Do ideas emerge from within the person, or do people recognise ideas already present in their environments?”
12.2021 | Lee Blake
When is it Graffiti or Street/Wall Art or even Mural Art?
As a Pilgrim (Peregrino) walking the Portuguese Camino (The Way) during July and August of 2018, the title of this article became very apparent.
10.2021| John Siddall
Creativity Series part I: A portrait of the artist
Evolutionary theorists claim that reproduction is the ultimate desire of all living things.
09.2021 | Lee Blake
The Dark secret of time travel
All storytelling is fundamentally about a change in fortune: Someone had or gained something, only to lose it—says Kurt Vonnegut.
03.2021 | Lee Blake
The man who created a universe
I suppose many tributes begin with some background information on their early lives, their ancestry, possibly even make reference to the fact that they had a different name at birth. To be honest all of these things seem far too grounded in our universe.
02.2021 | Alistair Duff
Is the music no longer good or are you just getting old?
People of my generation and older generally aren’t qualified to comment on the state of music today. I’m 30 years old and I have to concede that my peers and I long entered the stage of our lives in which we start to sound more and more like our parents.
12.2020 | Kibo Ngowi
A man, a mouse and an imagination
People of all ages around the world have been touched by Walt Disney. Whether you watched his productions as a child or have enjoyed them with your own children, his classics have kept open the doors of make-believe.
12.2020 | Ingrid Wood
Witty with a dash of sweet acid
Steven Boykey Sidley’s fourth novel, Free Association, is quite simply brilliant. It also has its finger pulsing on the heart of all that is topical
20.2020 | Arja Salafranca
Did Hollywood become a cash cow business without anyone noticing?
No industry has been more involved in shaping trends and informing the masses; nor has any industry been the topic of near constant conversation around the water cooler more than Hollywood.
10.2020 | Alistair Duff
Hillbilly Elegy: a memoir of a family and culture in crisis by JD Vance
Appalachia. No place like it. A place often romanticised and, consequently, misunderstood. A place that holds deep secrets and unspeakable tragedy.
12.2018 | Peter van der Walt
Science fiction becomes science fact
First the dreamers, then the engineers … how much of the technology in our lives today do we owe to stories of an imagined future?
12.2018 | Alistair Duff
Superhero films − how big genres live and die
Although the superhero genre has been around since the mid-1940s, over the past two decades these films have occupied the top spot among all genres available to us, on the big and small screen alike.
11.2018 | Lee Blake