Acid house Evangelist en route

A long time ago, in a college common room far, far away, a battered stereo belted out pioneering, high- decibel dance music. The deputy head of Northgate Sixth Form was not amused: he stormed in, cut the plug off, and stormed out. We barricaded the door shut, rewired the plug and cranked up the volume (Students 1, Authority 0 ). In a 500-strong institute, his was the lone voice of dissent.

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Just for laughs

Spats: not something ordinarily associated with stand-up comedy, but then neither is Earl Okin. The only act ever to open for Paul McCartney’s Wings, this self-professed “musical genius and sex symbol” represents an unlikely fusion of bossa nova and belly laughs, not to mention damn fine footwear.

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Dancing with Dictators: a very problematic publisher

“Jinxed” is how the Australian media described Dancing with Dictators, a documentary film about Southeast Asia’s most controversial newspaper man, when it was canned at the 11th hour during last year’s Sydney film festival.

When Phnom Penh Post and Myanmar Times publisher Ross Dunkley agreed to allow filmmakers to follow in his footsteps for an exposé on how the foreign media fares under one of the world’s most repressive regimes, few outside his immediate circle could have imagined what was to come.

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Animated film festival to draw cartoon-loving crowds

Traditional animation, far from dying a death with the advance of its high-tech counterpart, is experiencing something of a renaissance. In 1995, when Pixar launched the first ever feature film made entirely with computer-generated imagery (CGI), sceptics were quick to sound the death knell for its predecessor. But in recent years, often with the support of CGI animators, hand-drawn works by the likes of Japanese manga artist Hayao Miyazaki (Spirited Away; Howl’s Moving Castle) and French director Sylvain Chomet (The Triplets of Belleville; The Illusionist) have gained critical acclaim and, even more notably, been given nods at the Oscars.

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