Culture Diary w/c 31-03-2025
Our pick of this week’s arts, design, film and music events from across Liverpool and beyond…
Monday – A Clockwork Orange 8pm @ FACT Liverpool
Stanley Kubrick’s vision of Anthony Burgess’ novel of the same name follows Alex and his droogs running amok. Both the novel and film touch on national malaise, gang culture, political climate and general dystopia in a near-future Britain. Famously shocking to swathes of audiences on release, it was withdrawn from screening by Kubrick until after his death. A must-see.
Tuesday – 8½ 4.30pm @ FACT Liverpool – £8.50
“Guido! What are you working on? Something good?” We included Fellini’s 8½ last week, but it warrants another mention. It finds Marcello Mastroianni’s pained director Guido wrestling with his career; a self-referential triumph, it is considered one of the greatest commentaries on film ever committed to, well, film.
Wednesday – Turner 250: Intervention @ Williamson Art Gallery and Museum, Birkenhead – FREE
It’s unlikely to have escaped your attention that 2025 marks the 250th anniversary of JMW Turner’s birth, with exhibitions taking place nationwide to mark the auspicious occasion. From today, the Williamson – who in their own words hold ‘a small but impressive collection of Turner watercolours’ – gets in on the act by interspersing four of his works throughout their Philip Wilson Steer: In Conversation exhibition.
Milap Presents: Mehboob Nadeem 1pm @ the Tung Auditorium, Liverpool – FREE
Milap’s 40th anniversary celebrations continue. Featuring leading sitar player and vocalist Mehboob Nadeem with Kousic Sen on tabla, if you’re yet to explore Milap’s offer, this free lunchtime performance offers a perfect introduction to a sonic road less travelled.
Exploring Theresa Hak Kyung Cha’s Dictee with Jennifer Lee Tsai 5.30pm @ the Bluecoat, Liverpool – FREE
In 1982, multidisciplinary artist Theresa Hak Kyung Cha released Dictee. The book defies easy categorisation, sitting as it does across and between poetry, novel, autobiography, criticism and ethnography. Addressing the dislocation she felt as a South Korean-born woman in America, it tells the stories of Korean revolutionary Yu Guan Soon, Joan of Arc, Demeter and Persephone, Cha’s mother Hyung Soon Huo (born in Manchuria to first-generation Korean exiles), and Cha herself. Join artist in residence, poet Jennifer Lee Tsai, for reading and conversation about what is today considered an iconic work.
Thursday – Exhibition Opening: Joanne Masding; Rowena Harris; and Veronica Watson 6pm @ the Bluecoat, Liverpool – FREE
Following a relatively quiet start to 2025 at Bluecoat, this week sees the gallery launch a trio of exhibitions. Joanne Masding, who describes writing as a ‘sculpting tool’, explores words, images and objects in The Moveable Scene of the Page, by combining sculpture, fiction and typography. In her film Long Covid and the Culture of Disbelief, Rowena Harris (below) draws on her experience of living with ME. The condition, compounded for Harris by the pandemic, has a long and complicated story – one, not dissimilarly from those suffering with long Covid, bound up with the wider world’s disbelieving its actual nature. Upstairs, you’ll find portraiture from Veronica Watson; a founder member of Blueroom (Bluecoat’s inclusive arts project), for the best part of two decades, Watson has documented the comings and goings at the gallery, many of whom are immortalised on the gallery walls and in new publication, All Together Now.
Friday – People Versus TV: Kenneth Anger’s Lucifer Rising + Experimental Shorts 7.30pm @ DoES Liverpool – FREE
Flying saucers hover over the temple at Luxor to a soundtrack written by Jimmy Page and completed by Manson family associate Bobby Beausoleil; with a cast including Marianne Faithfull, iconoclast and disciple of Arthur Crowley, Kenneth Anger’s Lucifer Rising headlines this evening of international short film (see full line-up via link). Programmed by People Versus TV – champions of ‘unconventional, experimental, and community-driven cinema that challenges the mainstream’ – expect, as promised by PVTV, a plethora of ‘bold, surreal, and subversive cinema!’
Saturday – Liverpool Print Fair from 11am @ the Bluecoat, Liverpool – FREE
An opportunity to browse and buy affordable art, design, illustration and more, directly from the makers – of prints, zines, comics and other assorted artisanal gifts. Runs Saturday and Sunday.
Bonnie and Clyde 8.30pm @ FACT Liverpool –£8.50
Such was the studio’s reticence at the subject matter and graphic content that it took Bonnie and Clyde’s producer and star Warren Beatty to perform a major feat of arm-twisting just to gain the necessary financing to get it off the ground. The rest, as they say, is history as it became Warner Bros second highest grossing movie breaking numerous cinematic taboos along the way.
Sunday – Open Voices: A Celebration with the People of Anfield 1pm @ Open Eye Gallery, Liverpool – FREE
Since 2023, photographer Emma Case and poet Pauline Rowe have overseen the activities of the People of Anfield Project. Working alongside organisations and communities there, the project (commissioned by Culture Liverpool) has so far led to a publication, exhibition and film. Today’s gathering (open to all), is a celebration of new writing produced by Kitty’s Writers Group, and of the project’s outputs so far.
Mike Pinnington
Images/media: A Clockwork Orange; 81/2 trailer; Theresa Hak Kyung Cha’s Dictee; Long Covid and the Culture of Disbelief, Rowena Harris; photograph by Emma Case
