China may be giving striptease funerals the last rites after officials arrested five people and ordered an end to the practice, state media said on Thursday. Strip shows have been commonly used to attract more mourners to funerals, as villagers believe a crowded send-off brings more honor to the deceased, Xinhua news agency said.
"The novel, more than any other art form, defines a people’s identity; the 19th-century novel did this for Europe. The 20th-century novel in Africa — I shall call it the classical African novel – tried to open a window into the African mind." Helon Habila is encouraged by writers who have gone beyond their colonial legacy.
Craig Freimond is trying to quit smoking. He is buying his cigarettes loose, as if that helps. He can’t take the cold, but we have to sit outside on the balcony of the Wits University theatre nearby the rehearsal room of his new play. It is a toss-up between heat and smoke, appropriate since his first movie is about the downside of addiction. Matthew Krouse speaks to director Craig Freimond.
‘God forbid! White people are moving into the townships! Crime will go up! Property prices will go down!” This was the greeting Wits doctoral fellow Detlev Krige received when he announced to his companion at a drinking hole in Rockville, Soweto, that he was about to become a neighbour. A recent conference revealed the extent to which <i>ikasi</i> and metropolitan cultures have crossed over, report Sizwe samaYende and Liz McGregor.
It is known as Denglisch, a hybrid of Deutsch and English, and cultural purists say it is an insult to the language of Goethe and should be purged from the vocabulary. Denglisch has spread steadily as Germans adopted United States phrases in business, advertising, technology, and everyday speech.
Satellite navigation (satnav) systems may be the latest ”must have” car gadgets but London’s cab drivers, who have to pass the world’s toughest taxi exam, are not impressed. While hundreds of thousands of the high-tech guidance systems are sold in Britain every year most cabbies in London prefer to rely on their own brain power.
When the guns went silent in Aitta Shaab, a war-ravaged village close to the Israeli border, three children skipped through the rubble looking for a little fun. Hurdling over lumps of crushed concrete and dodging spikes of twisted metal, Sukna, Hassan and Merwa, aged 10 to 12, paused before a curious object. Sukna picked it up.
”Gone, by implication, are the days of slavery, colonialism and imperial arrogance. Gone is the world of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. We live in a new age of enlightenment. Or so it seems, until you start listening to where the dialogue is heading”. John Matshikiza takes a look at new theatre production Blue/Orange.
At the first squelch, I knew the film would be ruined. Out of the corner of my eye, I had seen her unwrap the gum, pop the wad in her mouth and masticate it experimentally. But worse was to come. The stranger sitting next to me, at the screening of the meticulously restored print of the 1970s kung-fu classic, The 36th Chamber of Shaolin, was a talker. Simon Busch talks cinema etiquette.
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