In a media world with one eye on the bottom line and the other on the official line, it’s getting harder to publish or broadcast anything that doesn’t promise huge sales and attendant profits, and that doesn’t say or show what is approved. But it’s still possible.

A new exhibition at the Pompidou Centre in Paris makes connections between the films of Victor Erice and Abbas Kiarostami. Both are fascinated with childhood, both have resisted film industry pressures and asserted their independence and artistic integrity. The exhibition combines video installations with photographs and (...)

A child wrote to me about a tree in his courtyard. The tree provides lots of plums which the child loves to eat, and he asked me if the tree can enjoy its own fruit. My immediate instinct was to (...)