Culture Diary w/c 17-06-2024

Our pick of this week’s arts, design, film and music events from across Liverpool and beyond…

Monday – All About Eve 7.30pm @ FACT Liverpool – £8

Anna Baxter plays the titular Eve, an ingénue who insinuates herself into the life and circle of established but aging actress, Margo Channing (Bette Davis). A complex picture of obsession and ambition, in it you can see a blueprint of sorts for Yorgos Lanthimos’ The Favourite.

Tuesday – Strike: An Uncivil War + Recorded Q&A 6pm @ FACT Liverpool – £12.40

Marking the 40th anniversary of the Battle of Orgreave – a violent and pivotal event – director Daniel Gordon’s film revisits the desperate times and brutal policing common during the 1984–85 miners’ strike. Hearing from those on the front lines, it scrutinises previously hidden government documents and fabricated witness statements, lifting the veil on one of the most traumatic moments in postwar Britain.

Wednesday – Exhibition Closing: Fearful Symmetry @ the Royal Standard, Liverpool – FREE

Last chance to see Fearful Symmetry, a painting show from Xanthe Tilzey.

Lewsberg 7.15pm @ Future Yard, Birkenhead – £12.50

Now seems to be a good time for spoken-not-sung, deadpan delivery vocals. So it is with Rotterdam four piece, Lewsberg, who bring their particular slice of post-punk countercultural stylings to Birkenhead this week, touring latest album, Out and About. New to me, I like this a lot.

Thursday – Open Advice Sessions from 9.30am @ Metal Liverpool – FREE

From potential funding opps to venues and possible partners, sometimes, for a project to go anywhere, you need to share it first. Here, Metal are offering a sounding board, or the kindling if you like, which might just be the thing for your idea to catch fire.

Friday – Out: Funeral Parade of Roses 8.30pm @ FACT Liverpool – £8

A landmark of Japanese queer cinema, Funeral Parade of Roses captures in haunting monochrome the exploration of the so-called ‘gay boy’ culture of Tokyo’s 1960s underground.

Saturday – Nancy Holt: Sun Tunnels @ Tate Liverpool + RIBA North – FREE

From Richard Serra’s Qatari monoliths to Donald Judd’s concrete works in Marfa, Texas, there is something both mythic and elemental about our need to commune with the landscape. Nancy Holt’s Sun Tunnels places us in similar territory, as the artist’s 1978 film, currently on display at Tate Liverpool, situates us in the Utah desert. Framing the sun as it rises and sets during the summer and winter solstices, the work poses questions about human experience – and our ecological footprint.

Africa Oyé @ Sefton Park, Liverpool – FREE

The UK’s largest free celebration of African music, Africa Oyé highlights the vibrancy of a continent through culture, food and, of course, music. Performers, including Florence Adooni, Def MaMa Def and Les Amazones d’Afrique, bring a spectrum of sounds to Liverpool for the (hopefully sun-kissed) weekend. What’s not to love?

Sunday – Cléo from 5 to 7 4pm @ FACT Liverpool – £8

Pre-dating the French New Wave with La Pointe Courte (her 1954 debut is said by some to have invented the nouvelle vague) and, indeed, outlasting it, director Agnès Varda’s second feature was Cléo from 5 to 7. It finds singer Cléo Victoire anxiously passing time, awaiting the results of a biopsy. Shot in real time and flitting from colour to monochrome, this being the FNW and this being Varda, means Victoire’s fate is only half the story.

Bye Bye Tiberias 6.30pm + Director Q&A @ FACT Liverpool – £12.40

Showing as part of SAFAR Film Festival, ‘the largest festival in the UK dedicated to cinema from the Arab world’, essay doc Bye Bye Tiberias follows Hiam Abbass, who left her village in Palestine to become an actress in Europe. The film is directed by Abbass’ French-Palestinian-Algerian filmmaker and actress daughter, Lina Soualem, on hand here for a Q&A.

Mike Pinnington

Images/media, from top: Nancy Holt Sun Tunnels 1978. Film still © Holt/Smithson Foundation⁠; courtesy Holt/Smithson Foundation and Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI), New York; Strike: An Uncivil War trailer; Lewsberg Bandcamp; Funeral Parade of Roses trailer; Cléo from 5 to 7 trailer