True North review – students take stand against racism in highly charged account of protest in 60s Canada

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Interviews and archive material are elegantly stitched together in this look at a huge student uprising in 1969 Quebec If someone mentions race riots and student protests in the 1960s and 70s, chances are that would mean, to most people, civil rights protests in the American south, sit-ins in California or the National Guard opening fire on students at Kent State University in Ohio. But revolution and resistance were ideas that crossed borders and seeded outbreaks all over the world, and supposedly friendly, polite countries such as Canada had no special immunity. This elegantly crafted documentary, directed by Michèle Stephenson, recounts a charged moment in Quebec history in 1969 when black students at Sir George Williams University, now called Concordia University, staged what would become the biggest campus protest in Canadian history; it resulted in scores of arrests and about C$2m in property damage due to fire destroying a computer lab. Interviews with several of the protest’s k...
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The Virgin Suicides review – Sofia Coppola’s debut rereleased with solemn trigger-warning

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Sunlit suburban calm masks the shocking nature of the story itself: a horrendous tragedy in the guise of a teenage coming-of-age movie

Nearly a quarter of a century ago, Sofia Coppola made her feature directing debut with this adaptation of the literary sensation of its day: Jeffrey Eugenides’s novel about five teen sisters in 70s suburban Michigan who take their own lives. Now it is rereleased with a solemn trigger-warning disclaimer at the beginning about certain historic attitudes which might now cause offence; these are unspecified, but appears to mean the entire premise of the film, up there in the title, but which is treated more circumspectly nowadays in the context of new ideas around self-harm and “suicidal ideation”.

This was a movie which mystified as many as it entranced, and it would be honest of me to admit that I didn’t quite understand it back in 2000, and maybe don’t quite now. But I can perhaps appreciate with more clarity its artistry and poise and the confident way Coppola allows her film to be serenely mysterious and almost affectless in its sunlit suburban calm, a reticence which appears to mask the shocking nature of the story itself: a horrendous tragedy in the guise of a teenage coming-of-age movie.

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