A Bird’s Revenge

The Nightingale (Jennifer Kent, Australia, 2018) Review by Khalid Ali, film and media correspondent Recently the presence of women film-makers is becoming more prominent and influential in international film circuits. The Sundance Film Festival London 2019 (https://spotlight.picturehouses.com/sundance-film-festival-2019-london/sundance-film-festival-19-london-full-programme/) continues the trend of showcasing the best of world cinema made by talented women with compelling stories to […]

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Enchanting Robots: Intimacy, Magic, and Technology by Maciej Musiał

Review by Sue Smith Enchanting Robots: Intimacy, Magic, and Technology is part of the book series, Social and Cultural Studies of Robots and AI, edited by Kathleen Richardson, Cathrine Hasse and Teresa Heffernan, and is written by Polish academic, Maciej Musiał. In Enchanting Robots Musiał discusses ‘magic’ and ‘magical thinking’ in order to critically assess […]

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When Bodies Think: Panpsychism, Pluralism, Biopolitics

Article Summary by Brandy Schillace In today’s preview, we hear from Dr Martin Savransky, Department of Sociology, Goldsmiths University of London. His article, which will appear in our June special issue, explores calls for more participatory forms of medicine and healthcare under what might be described as the ’biopolitical problematic.’ Savransky defines this problematic as […]

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History Lessons: Immigration, the NHS, and Fear of the Other

EIC Brandy Schillace interviews Professor Roberta Bivins, Centre for the History of Medicine Department of History, University of Warwick. Since 2015, Dr. Bivins and her colleagues have been asking what the NHS means to people in Britain, and how it came to have such emotional and political resonance. She also recently finished Contagious Communities, a […]

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Silent Suffering in the Valleys of Hope

Review by Dr Ayesha Ahmad, Global Health Correspondent, Medical Humanities Journal Widow of Silence, d: Praveen Morchhale, India, 2018 (Urdu with English subtitles) Winner of ‘best film award’ in Kolkata Indian Film Competition   Showing at the London Indian Film Festival 2019, http://londonindianfilmfestival.co.uk/2019-festival-programme/ The silence during the first few scenes of ‘Widow of Silence’ is […]

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The Sadness is Always There

Review by Professor Robert Abrams, Weill Cornell Medicine, New York ‘This Shaking Keeps Me Steady’ directed by Shehrezad Maher, India, 2018  Showing in the London Indian Film Festival (http://londonindianfilmfestival.co.uk/) In the film, ‘This shaking keeps me steady’ the deep emotion and dreams stirred by traumatic scenes are sharply juxtaposed with acting, which is presented as […]

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Towards More Thoughtful Evidence Communication

Reflection by Aleksi Raudasoja In the end of my training in medical school, I was having an identity crisis as a medical doctor. In medical school, I was taught to follow practice guidelines and many times told how they represent the best available evidence. Nice, I thought, sounds like I’m not going to make mistakes […]

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Ch-ch-ch-changes (Turn and Face the Strange)

Review by © James Evans, Film Critic/Historian Review of Roobha, and Ghost of the Golden Groves Roobha (d: Lenin M. Sivam) and Ghost of the Golden Groves (Shonajhurir, d: Roshni Sen and Aniket Dutta) are two films at the London Indian Film Festival sharing similar themes, but radically different subject matters. The thematic similarities concern […]

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No Pain, All Gain

Review by Dr Khalid Ali, film and media correspondent ‘The Man Who Feels No Pain’ (Mard Ko Dard Nahin Hota), Vasan Bala, India 2018 Showing at the London Indian Film Festival (http://londonindianfilmfestival.co.uk/) The Bagri Foundation London Film Festival celebrates a decade of bringing the best new South Asian films to the UK. The festival will […]

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Words in Pain

Book Review by Kelechi Anucha Olga Jacoby. Ed. Jocelyn Catty, Trevor Moore, Skyscraper Publications, 2019.254pp, £15.00. Words in Pain is a collected volume of letters by a young woman named Olga Jacoby, written over a four year period from 1909 to 1913. It follows the inexorable progression of her terminal illness and is addressed to […]

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