State of Statelessness review – Dalai Lama presides over intimate dramas about Tibetans’ life of exile

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Tibetan directors, who all live outside Tibet, deliver a quartet of films that explore the pain of separation and migration The wrench of exile is the theme of this quartet of short films from Tibetan directors, who themselves all live outside Tibet. Their intimate, emotional family dramas tell stories of separation and migration. In two of them, the 90-year-old Dalai Lama smiles out from photographs on shrines, a reminder of the precariousness of Tibet’s future. As a character in one of the films puts it bluntly: will there be anything to stop China erasing Tibetan identity when its rock-star spiritual leader is no longer around? In the first film a Tibetan man lives in a kind of complicated happiness in Vietnam. He loves his wife, and they both adore their sunny-natured little daughter, but he has mournful eyes. Home is a town on the banks of the Mekong River, which has its source in Tibet. The river is a constant reminder of the region – and of Chinese might too, since Chinese hyd...
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Harder Than the Rock review – reggae’s unsung heroes finally get their moment

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Cimarons, the UK’s first reggae band, played with Jimmy Cliff and Bob Marley but barely made a penny; this heartwarming film follows their first gig in 30 years

The UK’s first reggae band deserves all the love and attention coming their way with the release of this documentary. It’s the untold story of Cimarons, and begins in 1967 at a bus stop in London’s Harlesden where two Jamaican-born Londoners, Locksley Gichie and Franklyn Dunn, met and formed a band. By the end of the decade Cimarons would become the go-to backing group for Jamaican artists touring the UK, playing with the likes of Jimmy Cliff and Bob Marley. The band recorded albums of their own, worked as session musicians for Trojan records and toured with the Clash and the Jam. “They were the spark that started a big flame” is how MC General Levy describes their influence. But they barely made a penny out of music. Today, the band’s singer Michael Arkk works as an officer cleaner. How did Cimarons become reggae’s forgotten heroes?

Partly it comes down to choices. The band never hired professional management. They were in it for the music, touring in a clapped-out van with no heating and broken windscreen wipers. They called themselves Cimarons after a TV western, and only later found out it meant “wild and free”. The name fits.

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