Covid-19

Movies to help us through: “Another Year”

~ Michael Stevenson ~ Leave a comment

By Michael Stevenson

The Hobbledehoy never fail to see the latest film from British director Mike Leigh. High Hopes, Life Is Sweet, Career Girls, Happy Go Lucky are each wonderful films, but the one we need to help us through the Covid-19 lockdown is 2010’s Another Year.

Why is film necessary viewing during our confinement? I love how the characters in Another Year take care of each other. The script covers four seasons in the life of one British couple, Tom (Jim Broadbent) and Gerri (Ruth Sheen) and their small group of friends. The couple tends a seasonal garden that requires tender care, as does their challenging friend “Mary” (Lesley Manville) – a deeply troubled narcissist trying to hold onto her youth by pursuing her friend’s much younger son. There is birth, death, disease and always much love throughout.

Leigh’s actors Broadbent (Another Year, Life Is Sweet) Sheen (High Hopes, Vera Drake) and Manville (High Hopes) each give brilliant performances.

Said one reviewer of Another Year: “Ordinary people doing really ordinary things and making these things really important.”

I suppose that’s what we are each doing during this lockdown – making seemingly ordinary things, like staying at home, really important. And caring for each other, even our crazy friends.

Have you seen Another Year ? If so, tell us your thoughts. Have your own film recommendation to help us get through? Tell us.

Watch ANOTHER YEAR on Amazon

Interview with Jim Broadbent and Lesley Manville

‘Build back better’ will be a betrayal if it does not empower women

~ Michael Stevenson ~ Leave a comment

Annie Lennox

By Annie Lennox

As world leaders convene for the G7 summit, to “help the world fight, and then build back better from coronavirus”, I would like them to consider this… Among the wreckage of lives and livelihoods that we are yet to fully quantify, a newly established fact has emerged that should make our blood run cold. In the wake of this dreadful pandemic, key rights of women and girls around the world have been rolled back by an entire generation. 

Let this sink in: if you are a woman younger than 36 years old, then crucial progress achieved towards gender equality for you has been rolled back to a time before you were born. 

Every time a humanitarian or economic disaster hits, women bear the heaviest burden. The Covid-19 crisis has seen this ugly truth played out on a worldwide scale, in rich and poor countries alike, with the most discriminated-against groups enduring the harshest impacts. COVID-19 has had a devastating effect on the lives of women and girls beyond its obvious impact as a health emergency. In poorer countries, girls have been disproportionately pulled out of school, many of whom will never return. Around the world, it has doubled women’s domestic workload, impacting their careers, or stopping their employment altogether. And perhaps most heinous of all, it has exacerbated the everlasting scourge of violence against women, particularly in their own homes.

Yet – as ever – women are on the frontlines in tackling this crisis, just as they are in every crisis. Despite the multiple threats facing them, women have been at the forefront of the response to Covid-19. 

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