CHRIS SEARLE recommends a work of love and deep admiration for a great musician
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Solidarity with former mining communities
JOHN GREEN applauds a compassionate study of former mining communities that is filled with empathy, and anger
Hugh & Jason, Croeserw
[Tina Carr and Annemarie Schone]
KENNY MacASKILL relishes a fictionalised account of the life and death of the principled Irish anti-colonialist, executed for betraying his English imperial masters
FIONA O’CONNOR admires an ambitious first novel that loosens South Africa’s rainbow collective to examine the racial tensions within
Aussie mining corporation murder, Liverpudlian ex-cop amnesia, a naive vigilante tries to reset capitalism, and the riddle of the dead psychoanalyst
SYLVIA HIKINS is persuaded by an entertaining play that the true miracle of Lourdes would be for attitudes toward disability to change
JAMIE BRITTON recommends this fine analysis of the architectural, ecological and infrastructural destruction of the Gaza Strip
Coalfaces – Life After Coal in the Afan Valley
Tina Carr and Annemarie Schone, Parthian, £25
COALFACES portrays the life and landscape of five small communities in the Afan Valley of south Wales, following the closure of the last pit. Since then, the area has had to deal with high levels of unemployment and has faced severe adjustment problems.
Over more than 10 years, Tina Carr and Annemarie Schone worked with the residents of the valley to document the place they call “home.”
As the late painter and broadcaster Osi Rhys Osmond writes in his introduction: “This photographic reportage, together with a DVD of interviews, comes to us with a strange duality.” It presents a challenge but is also a paean to the resilience of the valley people.
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