From Almaty
A column of Porches holds up traffic outside our hotel. Down the road, workmen put the finishing touches to the city’s newest Armani store. The bar round the corner serves up sushi and shishas. The streets are clean, green. Not a beggar in sight. This could be anywhere. This beautiful, happening city surrounded by snowcapped...
Willy Wonkers
The macho men, they’re running scared in Congo. Found, only because a major deadline is looming, and what better way to deal with that than to go surfing the internet for random useless bits of information?
Gotta Be Nuts
You gotta be nuts was something we heard fairly regularly when we first decided to give this indie filmmaking thing a try. Gotta be nuts for choosing, of all places, to go to Passabe. Gotta be nuts for walking into that minefield. Gotta be nuts for spending sleepless nights in Shamshuipo. Nuts. Absolutely nuts. Over...
We’re On Deadline, Seriously
So there’s a script to write, 40 tapes to look at and 200 pages of transcripts to digest. Great time to get on YouTube and watch the Japanese do strange things to themselves. There’s the Human Tetris game where grown men have to contort their bodies into strange positions in order to avoid being hit...
Bippen
Cutest, smartest five-year-old we know. And highlight of James’ recent shoot in Varanasi.
Not Quite The Christmas We Were Expecting
Definition of a miserable Christmas : the one just past. The one wasted at Tribhuvan Airport, freezing our butts off, sipping overpriced weak tea, waiting for the skies to clear. Waiting for the plane to take off. Waiting, waiting, waiting for Christmas – the brilliant one we’d planned with exotic wild animals, and hot chocolate,...
On The Road With Sarwanam
Rupendehi. Taulihawa. Kawasoti. Tansen (beautiful Tansen!). Until recently, a string of pretty names on a sheet of paper: stops on a grand tour across Nepal by Sarwanam, the country’s best-known theatre group. They’ve been travelling and performing on the streets. This time, the focus is on women in the peace process. Guess who’s been getting...
