Stray review – exquisite dog's eye view of Istanbul

Elizabeth Lo’s film about the street dogs of the Turkish metropolis is the perfect companion piece to Kedi, a 2016 work about its cats

Queen of the road … Zeytin in Stray. Photograph: Dogwoof films

Leslie Felperin
Tue 23 Mar 2021 

At last, just what world cinema really needs right now: an exquisitely made film about street dogs in Istanbul, satiating that universal desire to see distant lands, coo over beautiful, noble animals, and satisfy the audience’s need to feel guilty about the misfortune of poorer, unluckier people. Director Elizabeth Lo’s first feature-length documentary ticks every box, while also providing a companion piece to Kedi, Ceyda Torun’s equally wonderful ode to Istanbul and Turkey’s feral felines. Together, the two films would make the perfect night in of viewing for quarantined animal lovers with frustrated wanderlust, especially anyone who loves the magnificently grotty Bosphorus metropolis.

Filmed seemingly with a low-slung camera held for great chunks of the running time at dog-head height, the film follows a gaggle of orphans both canine and human whose paths intersect and converge. A trio of Turkish-speaking refugees from Syria live in squatted building sites and doorways, and the camera stands back and watches while they huff glue from bags and space out. The actual protagonist is a yellow mutt named Zeytin, a Labra-something cross probably, with the most soulful eyes you’ll see in any movie this year. Dragging a slightly crook leg and sometimes palling up with dog friend Nazar – a dark, stockier lady of a certain age – Zeytin hangs with the Syrian boys and then saunters off to look for food when the fancy takes her, queen of the road, blithely unconcerned about cars.

The spliced-in grandiloquent quotes about dogs and philosophy and whatnot from Diogenes that pepper the film aren’t really necessary; the action speaks for itself. Perhaps because the star species here is more biddable and less camera-shy than the average cat, Lo’s film stays closer to its non-human heroine than Kedi did, creating a more lyrical, less anthropological study. That poetic vibe is richly enhanced by composer Ali Helnwein’s keening, cello-centric score that’s nimbly synched up to the editing. That said, nothing tops the vocal performance from Zeytin herself at the end, howling hauntingly along with a muezzin’s call to prayer.

Stray is released on 26 March on digital platforms.

'What appointments did these dogs have to keep?': long lunches and brief liaisons in a radical new dogumentary

‘One indomitable bitch’ … Zeytin in Stray. Photograph: Magnolia Pictures

To mark National Puppy Day, Elizabeth Lo’s acclaimed film Stray gives humans rare insight into the canine gaze, courtesy of homeless mutts in Istanbul

Richard Godwin
Tue 23 Mar 2021 

From the moment Zeytin makes her first appearance in Elizabeth Lo’s feature Stray, there is no doubt you are in the presence of a unique spirit. As she surveys an Istanbul side street at dawn, her features are alert, her gaze is uncompromising and her deep, dark eyes sparkle with intelligence. There’s something of Katharine Hepburn in The African Queen about her, or maybe Brad Pitt in one of his less kempt moments. But non-dog comparisons don’t do her justice. This is one indomitable bitch.

Lo first encountered Zeytin and her friend Nazar on a 2017 casting trip to Turkey, and knew immediately that she had found the star she was looking for – which is to say, a dog who could carry a human film. “We were wandering through a busy underground tunnel filled with people when suddenly these two giant stray dogs streaked past us,” she says. “They were running with such a sense of purpose and it was so intriguing. What appointments did these dogs have to keep?”

Lo and her small crew of Turkish co-producers ended up tailing Zeytin, Nazar and another dog, Kartal, to all of their appointments around Istanbul for a period of over two years, trying to answer that question. Her documentary, filmed entirely at dog-height and given an immersive soundtrack by the sound artist Ernst Karel, reveals a rich social calendar, as the dogs trot to meetings with fishers on the Galata Bridge, lunches with refuse collectors on the Istiklal Caddesi, brisk liaisons with male dogs and long nights sleeping on construction sites with Jamil, Halil and Aliof, three refugees from Aleppo.

Stray, Lo’s debut feature-length documentary, is already a cult hit on the (virtual) festival circuit, enthusiastically received by human and dog audiences alike. However, it defies the sentimentality of pet movies such as Marley & Me or even non-human-centred stories like Robert Bresson’s Au Hasard Balthazar. Instead, it is a meditation on non-human intelligence that seems to open the way towards a new interspecies cinema. Zeytin, stubborn and independent, was the one dog throughout the whole casting process who didn’t try to follow the human crew around. “It allowed us to follow her, for her to take us places and for audiences to be enveloped in a non-human will and agency,” says Lo.

It’s no surprise to find that Lo is a dog-lover. She grew up in Hong Kong with a sheepdog named Mikey and when Mikey died, she vowed to make a film that honoured a dog’s life on its own terms rather than through the prism of ownership. “It was about recentring a narrative, visually and sonically, around a non-human gaze, breaking away from an anthropocentric way of viewing the world,” she says.

Her initial thought was to make a documentary comparing the treatment of stray dogs in different cities around the world, but the unusual legal status of stray dogs in Istanbul ended up consuming her attention. For most of the last century, Turkish authorities have battled against stray (and often rabid) dogs, ultimately resorting to inhumane methods such as mass poisonings – which only made the dogs more hostile and dangerous. Eventually, public outcry forced a change in the law. Since 2004, it has been illegal to euthanise or capture any stray dog in Turkey. The result, in Istanbul, is that dogs now eat, sleep, defecate and mate wherever they choose. The authorities merely vaccinate, sterilise, tag and provide medical attention to the strays. What Lo saw as she followed Zeytin, Nazar and Kartal around was a city of 15 million people taking communal care of the city’s estimated 130,000 dogs, who lead far more fulfilling lives as a result.

‘It was about recentring a narrative, visually and sonically, around a non-human gaze, breaking away from an anthropocentric way of viewing the world’ … Stray. Photograph: Magnolia Pictures

"The hours-long adventures that these dogs would take themselves on!” she marvels. “Walks upon walks upon walks upon walks. Most pets don’t ever get to experience that. It made me realise the potential that dogs have, the desires that are not often fulfilled, even under the care of people as pets. I hope the film acts as a decolonising tool, to challenge Eurocentric views on what a humane and just city looks like.”

What she witnessed in Istanbul was that dogs could successfully integrate into a city without becoming nuisances or harming themselves – and the dogs were, not coincidentally, far better socialised than the vast majority of pets in LA, where Lo has lived for most of the last decade. There are no interviews or commentary in the film – only a bit of overheard gossip – though there are some choice maxims from Diogenes of Sinope in 360BC: “Human beings live artificially and hypocritically and would do well to study the dog.” While Lo says she wouldn’t presume to speak for animals, this is a polemical film, strongly influenced by Donna Haraway’s writings about interspecies relations and John Berger’s essay, Why Look at Animals? And Lo’s camera can’t help but make implicit comparisons, notably between the status of the dogs and the Syrian refugees who befriend them. It was to these “stray” men that Zeytin and Nazar were running to when Lo first encountered them in the tunnel and their bond is at the heart of the film. Again, the relatively hospitable treatment given to the refugees also took her by surprise. In the film, we do see them being moved on, but the security guards who are doing so are generally apologetic as they do so. “I felt a lot of compassion there. When I asked people how they felt about refugees, oftentimes, people would say: ‘They are our brothers, they are in need and Turkey is a haven for those in need.’ Even government officials would sometimes say that.”

I watched the film conditioned by stories such as Black Beauty or White Fang to expect that at some point Zeytin would be subjected to cruelty and violence. But the moment doesn’t arrive; she doesn’t fall into our usual categories of victim or hero, wild or tame. There’s a funny moment when she wanders into the middle of a feminist rally where she is fondled by of the protesters – only to be mounted by a male dog as the protesters yell loudly about consent. “I’m not sure what the scene is saying exactly, but I loved the surrealism of it,” Lo laughs.

Zeytin had charisma, but she made Lo work hard. She was unusual in that she was completely unfazed by Lo’s camera – which allowed all those lingering closeups – but she also proved unbribable with even the choicest cuts of meat, since she was so adept at finding whatever she wanted on the street. “A lot of times, we would just be waiting and waiting and waiting for Zeytin to wake up – and sometimes she wouldn’t wake up until 5pm. Her rhythms were her own. We just had to surrender our desires for whatever we might expect of a film’s story and hand it over to her. Sometimes she would chase after sounds that we couldn’t hear or smells that we couldn’t smell. It was just a process of letting go and trying to immerse.”

After a night of filming, Lo would strap on small GPS devices so that she could find her again the next day. Still more challenging was the gap of almost a year in the middle of filming. Everyone outside of Istanbul thought that she wouldn’t survive long on the streets – but Lo found her within a couple of days of returning to the city. Even now, a couple of years after she finished production, her friends in Istanbul are still sending her pictures of Zeytin and Nazar whenever they see them.

‘A lot of times, we would just be waiting and waiting and waiting for Zeytin to wake up – and sometimes she wouldn’t wake up until 5pm’ … Stray. Photograph: Magnolia Pictures

She hopes that the film will make people reflect on our double standards when it comes to dogs in the west. She is disturbed by the internet – and the lockdown-driven vogue for pure-bred dogs : “Have these pet owners stopped to consider where the mother of their beloved is, how much she has suffered in breeding facilities?” However, she thinks that pet ownership can be a gateway to empathy with other species, noting that in California, pet owners vote in far greater numbers for animal-welfare measures. And she hopes that the film will make us question our assumptions.

“We think that we treat dogs better in the west. But really the fact that New York, London, LA don’t have dogs on the street is indicative of how intolerant we actually are. Unless a dog is property, it has no rights at all. Which is insane if you think about it. We’ve somehow reframed the insanity of killing millions of dogs every year or letting them languish in cells as the moral thing to do when in fact it’s the opposite.”

In Istanbul, she says, she was able to have fulfilling relationships with animals that weren’t based on ownership – and has missed it ever since. “John Berger writes: maybe the impulse to go to the zoo is to fulfil this desire that is so lacking in our modern existence. It’s in our blood to be with other species and to communicate with them. The experience in Turkey showed me what I’d been missing in the cultures I’d grown up in, where the streets are devoid of other species. That’s such an impoverished way to go through the world.”

Stray is available to preview on www.stray-film.co.uk to celebrate National Puppy Day on March 23, ahead of its digital release on March 26

UK startup raises €8m of funding to convert CO2 into animal feed

SOY THE MANNA OF VEGITARIANS

Deep Branch aims to create protein that will replace the use of soy, which has been linked to deforestation

A soybean plantation in Rondônia, Brazil. Farmers are seeking a more sustainable food source for their animals. Photograph: Marizilda Cruppe/WWF-UK/PA

A UK company that turns carbon dioxide into protein to be used for animal feed has raised €8m (£6.8m) in funding as it seeks to displace the use of deforestation-linked soy by farmers.

Carbon and hydrogen are fed to a microorganism in a fermentation process similar to what you would see in a brewery. But rather than alcohol, the output is a high-value protein that can be dried and converted into pellets to feed animals.

The need for natural sources of protein such as soy and fishmeal has long been an environmental headache for farmers with animals to feed. Soy is linked to deforestation in regions such as the Amazon, and fishmeal requires large quantities of wild-caught fish to produce.

In contrast, the protein created by startup Deep Branch will rely on recycling carbon from industrial emitters. The waste gas will need to go through a chemical purification process to separate the carbon dioxide from other gases before it can be used to produce protein.

“There are big sustainability drawbacks from the proteins we currently use to produce animal products like salmon fillets and chicken drumsticks,” said Deep Branch’s co-founder, Peter Rowe, “but we can produce a high-quality protein without requiring any arable land or fish.”

Rowe said animal producers faced increased competition for feedstocks such as soy and fishmeal and that Deep Branch’s protein, which is being produced in Europe, offered a more secure food source less affected by geopolitics, seasonality or climate.

Insects have also been touted as a sustainable protein-rich alternative to soy and fishmeal, but Rowe said his firm’s protein would be easier to scale up and produce at lower cost, if it can locate next to industrial plants capturing carbon. The company will start commercial trials of its feed on chickens and salmon by the summer.

“It won’t all be plain sailing from here, though,” said Mike Allen, a professor in environmental sciences at the University of Exeter and Plymouth Marine Laboratory. “I imagine they will face significant challenges with scaling up their process, and they’ll still need to blend their product with other types of biomass to provide the full nutrient profile required for healthy animal growth.”

The startup has already attracted support from leading animal feed companies in Europe, BioMar and AB Agri, and is close to agreeing to build its first commercial production facility in Norway, where it hopes to supply the country’s aquaculture sector. Norway is the world’s leading salmon exporter and has a number of carbon capture and storage projects in development.

However, Allen said the company should not be seen as a climate-saving project. “Any process that utilises industrial CO2 emissions is great in theory, but they’ll have to be honest and realistic about how much CO2 they are actually remediating, and what their overall carbon footprint is.

“Most of the CO2 run through their bioreactors will pass straight through, I imagine. And the hydrogen will come with a carbon footprint too. This isn’t a carbon capture technology, despite how it may be branded – it’s a protein production platform,” he said.

While global demand for meat remained high, Rowe said, Deep Branch’s protein feed was a more sustainable alternative to soy or fishmeal.

“Yes, reducing meat consumption also reduces our impact on the environment, but not everyone sees it that way, so if we can reduce the impact of animal protein production, then that’s only a good thing,” he said.

WWF said it welcomed attempts to reduce dependence on soy. “These bacterial processes using excess materials like carbon dioxide and agricultural byproducts are a good thing, as they don’t, like soy, cause deforestation, biodiversity loss and don’t need freshwater or fertiliser,” said the charity’s aquaculture lead, Piers Hart.

“We shouldn’t be using precious land and fresh water to grow crops for feed when it could be used to grow crops for food, so we shouldn’t be using soy and maize to feed animals.

“Whether they [alternative proteins] will completely displace soy will come down to cost in the end. We hope that increasing demand and scaling production will bring the price down and also that people will say that, yes, it may be slightly more expensive, but it’s that much better for the planet that we will use it,” said Hart.

Elitism, murder and the other MCC: the complex story of cricket in Mexico

Mexico was one of the first countries outside England to embrace the game – so why is it not a Test-playing nation?

Mexico’s national side celebrate winning the 2018 South American Cricket Championship in Bogotá. Photograph: The Mexico Cricket Association

Emma John

Tue 23 Mar 2021 

“Had one been asked to name the thing with which there was the least chance of meeting in a country like Mexico,” wrote William Bullock in the mid-19th century, “one might very well have fixed on a game of croquet.” But even in Montezuma, his fellow Victorians still insisted on getting a game in.

It was around the same time as he stumbled upon croquet that Bullock – an English journalist and a first-class cricketer – discovered its near namesake was even more popular in the country. His book of his travels, Across Mexico in 1864-65, contains the first written account of cricket in Mexico, but by the time he committed it to paper, the game had been flourishing in the country for several decades.

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Mexico was, in fact, one of the first countries outside England to embrace the game. It had arrived on its shores in the 1820s, along with the British who had travelled to work in and profit from its silver mines in the years immediately after it gained independence from Spain. In the mountains of Hidalgo they quickly established no fewer than three cricket clubs in and around Pachuca\

As well as their love of sport, Cornish miners introduced their most famous foodstuff. You can still buy Cornish pasties all over the country – they’re a popular snack in Mexico, where they were adopted, adapted and improved on. So why didn’t the same happen with cricket, which was introduced a good 60 years before organised football made its appearance? What stopped Mexico becoming a Test-playing nation?

It’s a question that author Craig White has been pondering during lockdown, as he finally writes that history of Mexican cricket that the world has been waiting for. “I’ve actually been working on it for more than 10 years,” says White, who’s the secretary of the Mexican Cricket Association, “but I’ve never had the time to do it properly before. And so much information has been lost over the years that I’ve had to reconstruct a lot of the history from old newspaper accounts.”

As an NGO worker who began his career in the country at the British embassy, White is well aware of the international power dynamic that accompanied the sport during the 90 years before the Mexican Revolution ended its heyday. “The sport was a real celebration of Britishness at the time when Britain was the world power,” says White. “I was reading about one game played during the Boer war that was accompanied by a band playing patriotic songs and Union Jacks flying.”

There was no interest in spreading the game among the general population. “It was played in sports clubs that were well out of reach of all but the richest,” says White. In Mexico, cricket remained very much a sport of and for the elite – Eric Gomez, an ESPN journalist currently writing a history of Mexican football, points out that most Mexicans couldn’t afford a day off work to play a game, let alone spend money on kit, but they could kick a ball about with fellow workers at the end of their shift. This was one of the chief reasons that football prospered where cricket failed.

But then, cricket’s exclusivity was its very appeal – the game became a bulwark of power and prestige, just as it had in Britain’s colonies. Bullock was travelling through Mexico during the brief, doomed reign of Emperor Maximilian, the Austrian archduke put on the throne with the help of a French invasion. Sure enough, captured in a photograph by François Aubert, there is Maximilian all kitted out for one of the Mexican Cricket Club’s – or MCC’s – reds-v-blues Sunday games. Within a couple of years, Maximilian would be immortalised in a very different way when his death by firing squad was captured on canvas by Édouard Manet.

Even after the republic reasserted itself, cricket prospered – in no small part due to President Porfirio Díaz, dictator-to-be. His economic policies made Mexico a magnet for foreign investors from Britain, Australia and New Zealand, while a young Mexican elite learned the game in the British public schools to which many were sent to polish both their education and social standing. Luis Amor, who returned from Stonyhurst College to a life as a sugar plantation owner, established the Mexico Cricket Club in 1896, with the help of his brothers Alejandro, Victor and Pablo – all of whom had also fallen for the game at Stonyhurst.

It is a complex history, and one that deserves to be told, if nothing else as a cautionary tale of how cricket’s elitism and classism has so often been its own downfall. But also as a reminder that sport is never separate from politics. Not long after the Santa Rosa Athletic Club, whose cricketers called themselves “Los Rancheros”, celebrated a 65-run victory against Porfirio Díaz city, their president David McKellar was ambushed and murdered. He had angered Mexican ranchers by fencing off his land.

Bullock wrote, of the Sunday cricketers he met: “They assured me that they had never allowed political events to interfere with their game, which they had pursued unconcernedly, more than once, in view of the fighting going on in the hills around them.” But come the Mexican Revolution – swiftly followed by the first world war – many British and other expatriates returned to their home countries; their departure triggered the demise of Mexico’s cricket league and the sport in general.

“There’s a real similarity with Denmark and the Netherlands and other countries where cricket arrived early but remained among the elites,” says White. “It was a missed opportunity – cricket had a head start on football and baseball by at least half a century and it was squandered.” The Mexican Cricket Association has had considerable recent success establishing a national women’s team, and hopes that the game will finally reach the Mexican population through girls’ cricket. In the meantime, White is putting the finishing touches to his history – and publishers are encouraged to get in touch.

Berlin's plan to return Benin bronzes piles pressure on UK museums

British Museum and Pitt Rivers under pressure to hand back sculptures looted from Nigeria

BM REFUSES SAY'S THEY ARE A TOURIST ATTRACTION 

The British Museum in London holds the single largest collection of Benin bronzes. Photograph: Adam Eastland/Alamy

Philip Oltermann in Berlin
@philipoltermann
Tue 23 Mar 2021

Berlin is negotiating to fully restitute hundreds of the Benin bronzes in a shift of policy that has been welcomed in Nigeria but will put pressure on museums in London and Oxford to also return artefacts looted from Britain’s former west African empire in 1897.

More than 500 historical objects including 440 bronzes from the Kingdom of Benin, in what is now southern Nigeria, are held at the Ethnological Museum in the German capital. Half of the collection was due to go on display this autumn at the Humboldt Forum, a newly opened museum of non-European art in the city centre.

However, Hartmut Dorgerloh, the director of the Humboldt Forum, told German media on Monday that the complex could instead exhibit only replicas of the bronzes or leave symbolic empty spaces, and that the sculptures and reliefs could be returned to Nigeria as soon as the autumn


The exhibition, due to open at the end of the year, would “critically engage” with the history of the west African kingdom and its capture by British troops, a spokesperson for the Prussian Heritage Foundation told the Guardian.

“Especially in view of the current debate, we consider it essential to address this issue,” they said. “As a matter of principle this does not exclude the restitution of the exhibited works.”

Andreas Görgen, the head of the German foreign ministry’s culture department, visited Benin City last week for discussions with the Nigerian government, according to the Süddeutsche Zeitung.

Under the terms of the agreement as reported by the Art Newspaper, Germany would take part in archaeological excavations in the region, provide training for Nigerian museum employees, participate in the construction of a new museum in Benin, and restitute the looted Benin bronzes held in Berlin to the Restoration Legacy Trust, an NGO set up in 2019.

The bronzes were looted by British soldiers and sailors on a punitive expedition to Benin City in 1897 and subsequently scattered across museums in Europe and North America. The single largest collection of Benin bronzes is held by the British Museum, and a further 300 objects are held at the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford.

The museums have formed a Benin dialogue group to support the new museum, plans for which have been drawn up by the Ghanaian-British architect David Adjaye, but until recently they had agreed only to provide looted works on a rotating loan basis.


New museum in Nigeria raises hopes of resolution to Benin bronzes dispute

“This would be a hugely significant shift”, said Victor Ehikhamenor, a Nigerian artist and trustee of the Legacy Restoration Trust, which would receive the restituted artefacts. “If Germany follows through with these plans, then any European country that holds on to Benin bronzes no longer has a moral ground to stand on.

“The time has come for the British Museum to finally join in this debate. The current situation is a bit like a thief has stolen your watch and sold it to a pawn shop, but the pawn shop is refusing to hand it over to the police. It makes no sense.”

Bénédicte Savoy, a French art historian who resigned from the Humboldt Forum’s advisory board in 2017, criticised plans to exhibit the Benin bronzes in Germany in a recent interview, telling Der Spiegel that “with every month, with every day, it becomes less likely that you can show the bronzes without embarrassing yourself”.

A spokesperson for the British Museum, which is working with the Legacy Restoration Trust on an archeology project linked to the new museum, said in a statement: “The devastation and plunder wreaked upon Benin City during the British military expedition in 1897 is fully acknowledged by the museum and the circumstances around the acquisition of Benin objects explained in gallery panels and on the museum’s website.

“We believe the strength of the British Museum collection resides in its breadth and depth, allowing millions of visitors an understanding of the cultures of the world and how they interconnect over time – whether through trade, migration, conquest, or peaceful exchange.”

Liquid gold: beekeepers defying Yemen war to produce the best honey


Beekeepers collect honey comb from hives just outside Ataq, Shabwah governorate, Yemen. Photograph: Sam Tarling/Sana'a Centre


Despite the dangers, more Yemenis are turning to the sector as an alternative means of income

by Bethan McKernan in Ataq
Tue 23 Mar 2021


According to the Qur’an a lone sidr tree, or jujube, marks the highest boundary of heaven. On earth, amid the harshness of the Yemeni desert, the sweetness of sidr honey is cherished as a symbol of perseverance.

Yemen has long been renowned for producing some of the best honey in the world, often compared to Mānuka honey from New Zealand. Some of the highest quality, and purest, comes from bees fed exclusively on the flowers of the sidr, producing a pale coloured honey with a fiery, almost bitter aftertaste.

While the war has made travel difficult, closing off many roads, for traditional beekeepers life is much the same: they are some of the only people in Yemen who can traverse frontlines with ease, moving around every few months in search of flowers for their bees.

Honey sellers allow workers to sample their wares in a jewellery shop in Ataq, Shabwah governorate. Photograph: Sam Tarling/Sana'a Centre/Publication

“It doesn’t matter who is commanding a checkpoint. They see the beehives in the back of the truck and we don’t have to stop long. Even the Houthis [Yemen’s rebels] are afraid of bees,” said Said al-Aulaqi, 40, as he took a break from looking after 80 of his hives near the village of Khamer in Shabwa.

An estimated 100,000 small-scale beekeepers like Aulaqi in Yemen produce just 1,580 tonnes of honey a year, of which 840 tonnes is exported, according to a 2020 UN report.

Sidr honey can sell for up to $500 (£370) a kilogram in neighbouring Gulf states such as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. While honey connoisseurs maintain that the Yemeni product deserves a global market, decades of political instability have meant turbulent growth and limited outside reach.

Keen to improve food stability and bring money into the country, the government has identified honey as a key sector for expansion: beekeepers, wholesalers and exporters the Guardian met in and around Shabwa’s capital, Ataq, say they are keen to share their liquid gold with the rest of the world.

A beekeeper sells tins of honeycomb in the market area of Ataq, in Shabwah governorate. Photograph: Sam Tarling/Sana'a Centre

Aulaqi and his three young employees enthusiastically show off their wooden rectangular hives, opening the doors to display the rows of combs inside. Smoke from burning strips of hemp cloth keeps the bees drowsy and stops them stinging, although all four say they are immune after being attacked so many times.

The 40-year-old has been keeping bees for 10 years, after learning the trade from his uncle. He lost his entire livelihood in 2015, after the Houthis moved into Shabwa and blocked the road to neighbouring Abyan, where his bees died after running out of water.

It took two years to restart with another 300 boxes purchased at a cost of 2m Yemeni riyal (£1,850). Now his hives are scattered around Shabwa’s mountains, desert and coastal plain, depending on the season.

Honeycomb that has just been taken from hives, outside Ataq. Photograph: Sam Tarling/Sana'a Centre

The prized Sidr honey can only be harvested once every 12 months, but lower-grade acacia and desert flowers provide work year-round.

A generation ago, beehives were still cultivated in empty tree trunks and transported on the backs of camels; now, imported machine-made hives and pickup trucks make the work easier, even if beekeepers, like so many others in Yemen, are plagued by fuel shortages.

While there is money to be made in honey, there are also many challenges for beekeepers to overcome. If roadblocks or fighting make it impossible to move hives to more bountiful areas, the bees will die, and the insects are also at risk from unregulated pesticide use by farmers.

Adel Saleh Saber, 28, collects honeycomb from hives just outside Ataq. Photograph: Sam Tarling/Sana'a Centre

The war means beekeeping has become a hazardous occupation for humans too. Unmarked landmines are planted all over the country. And while keepers prefer to move bees at night, when the insects are sleepy, nocturnal movement is often viewed as suspicious by Yemen’s warring parties, and tracked closely from the air by Saudi and US drones.

Mohammed bin Lashar, a wholesaler in Ataq, said one of his suppliers was targeted by an airstrike in Maʼrib governorate. “He was lucky to survive. They probably thought he was al-Qaida,” he said.

Despite the dangers, and as inflation soars and steady work dries up, in Shabwa at least it appears more and more people are turning to beekeeping as an alternative means of income.

While more experienced keepers are happy to share what they know about the trade with newcomers, they are also worried that too many insects in the same area will make it difficult to find adequate food and water for the growing bee population, driving down standards and prices.

The honey market of Ataq in Shabwah, Yemen. Photograph: Sam Tarling/Sana'a Centre

In Ataq’s main square, dozens of beekeepers hawked their wares to individual shoppers and wholesalers, but few people were buying.

“This is my first season as a beekeeper,” said Saleh Al-Hansi, 25. “I like it, I enjoy the work. Other beekeepers encouraged me to start so I’ll have to see how it goes.”

There could be enough work for everyone if the authorities or local charities step in to help by planting more sidr trees, a move local beekeepers are lobbying for. Other necessary steps for expanding the sector include creating a standards agency and food safety certification system to allow Yemeni beekeepers to export their organic product throughout the world.

Aulaqi, proud of his work, would not give up his bees for anything. “It can be lonely sometimes; I only get to see my family once a month. But I used to do construction work in Saudi Arabia and it’s much better than that.

“Bees and honey are a blessing from God,” he said. “There is a lot to be thankful for.”

Suez Canal blocked after massive container ship Ever Given gets stuck sideways

By Dannielle Maguire
3/23/2021


YOUTUBE Footage from another ship shows dozens of other vessels waiting to enter the canal.

A 400-metre-long container ship is holding up traffic in the Suez Canal after becoming wedged sideways as it passed through the major shipping route.

The Ever Given attempted to pass through the canal while en route to Rotterdam, Netherlands but ran aground at about 6:00am Tuesday, local time, according to a report from maritime website Fleet Mon.

"As of 1440 UTC March 23, the giant ship was still aground with tugs attempting to refloat her," the website reported.

'That ship is super stuck'

An image posted to Instagram by Julianne Cona from a nearby ship shows the Ever Given almost completely sideways in the narrow canal.

"From the looks of it that ship is super stuck," she said in a comment.

"They had a bunch of tugs trying to pull and push it earlier but it was going nowhere. There is a little excavator trying to dig out the bow."

Data from public shipping tracker website Vessel Finder showed several tug boats still attempting to manoeuvre the vessel, owned by Taiwanese shipping company Evergreen, some eight hours after the photo was posted to Instagram.

The incident attracted attention on social media, with some comparing the situation to a scene from one of the Austin Powers films.


Austin Powers GIF(GIPHY)

It's unclear what caused the ship to run aground.

The Ever Given is 400 metres long and 59 metres wide.

The lane's water surface width is 313 metres, but the Suez Canal Authority says the navigation channel is between 200 and 210 metres wide.

It usually takes between 12 and 16 hours for a ships to transit through the canal.
A major traffic jam

The Suez Canal is a major shipping lane as it's the fastest route between Europe and Asia.

A snapshot from Vessel Finder show dozens of other vessels waiting to travel through the canal.

Vessel Finder data shows ships waiting either side of the canal. (Vessel Finder)

Tanker Trackers, yet another maritime tracking site, tweeted an animation of the flow of traffic leading up to the blockage:

"[It] has now blocked off a lot of fully-laden tankers from traversing in either direction," the tracking company tweeted.

"Tankers carrying Saudi, Russian, Omani and US oil are waiting on both ends."

Banksy's NHS tribute sells for record $30 million as UK marks coronavirus lockdown anniversary
3/23/2021

Banksy's 'Game Changer' painting sells for record $30 million at auction

VIDEO 

Duration: 1 minute 24 seconds

  Banksy's NHS tribute sells for record $30 million as UK marks coronavirus lockdown anniversary - ABC News

A Banksy painting showing a young boy playing with a toy nurse as a superhero has sold for more than $30 million, setting an auction record for the elusive British street artist.

Key points:

'Game Changer' pays tribute to frontline health workers during the pandemic

It fetched a record price on the one-year anniversary of the UK going into coronavirus lockdown

Banksy has released a series of COVID-themed artwork over the past year

'Game Changer', which was unveiled last May at University Hospital Southampton, paid tribute to the frontline workers of Britain's National Health Service (NHS) in their fight against the COVID-19 pandemic.

The black-and-white artwork shows a young boy lifting a nurse, her arm stretched and wearing a cape, while traditional superheroes Batman and Spiderman lie in a bin behind him.

In a Christie's auction streamed live, the painting sold for a hammer price of 14.4 million pounds ($26 million).

Added fees gave it a final price of 16.758 million pounds ($30 million), a world auction record for Banksy, according to Christie's.

The painting had carried an estimated value of around $4-6 million going into the auction.

Christie's said proceeds would go towards "supporting the wellbeing of University Hospital Southampton staff and patients".

The sale took place on Tuesday as Britons marked one year since Prime Minister Boris Johnson ordered the nation into its first lockdown.

A minute's silence was observed to remember the more than 126,000 people in the UK who have lost their lives to the virus.

Banksy has been busy during the pandemic, releasing several pieces that have caused amusement and sparked topical debate.

Last April, he created a new artwork in his bathroom that showed his trademark stencilled rats running amok around the sink and toilet.

The craze over toilet paper inspired Banksy in the early stages of the pandemic.

(Instagram: Banksy)

He posted photos of the work on his Instagram account as he abided by stay-at-home orders, along with the comment: "My wife hates it when I work from home."

In October, his Show Me the Money work, a twist on the impressionist's painting, sold for $13.9 million at auction.

And then in December, a mural of a sneezing woman by Banksy appeared on a house at the end of one of the steepest streets in Bristol, his birthplace.

'Aachoo!!' was unveiled in Banksy's hometown of Bristol last December.(Reuters: Rebecca Naden)

Banksy posted pictures of the work on his official Instagram account, along with the comment "Aachoo!!"

The mural showed the woman's false teeth propelled through the air and her handbag and walking stick sent flying by the violent sneeze.

London Transport ordered cleaners to remove Banksy's trademark rats last July.

(Instagram: Banksy)

But his work isn't universally beloved — his undercover graffiti on the London Underground last July — was scrubbed clean by Transport for London.

Banksy, whose true identity is a closely guarded secret, has been an active artist since 1990.

ABC/Reuters

Documentary films

That Cloud Never Left review – experimental ruminations on cinema and labour

Mundane life meets magical daydreams in a West Bengal village where discarded film footage is turned into toys

Otherworldly ... That Cloud Never Left

Phuong Le
Mon 22 Mar 2021

VIDEO 

That Cloud Never Left review – experimental ruminations on cinema and labour | Documentary films | The Guardian

An artful hybrid of documentary and fiction, That Cloud Never Left zooms in on quotidian life in Daspara, a small West Bengal village where toys are made from reels of discarded film footage. The iconography is clear: these pieces of film are filled with nostalgia and longing, and now bear witness to the beauty and toil of manual labour.

On the surface, That Cloud Never Left appears structurally fragmented, even opaque. There is an opening title that states that this is a work of fiction rather than a documentary; it is actually quite cheeky, considering that narrative is not a priority here, nor are any professional actors used. Instead, the film ditches linearity, and sees the villagers in fragments: a marital dispute over finances, a mother who waits for the monsoon, a boy searching for rubies in the forest. This mix of mundane life and magical daydreams lends an otherworldliness to this little village, as if the content of the cut-up film strips has seeped into everyday life.

In visual terms, That Cloud Never Left is just as eclectic and experimental, alternating between straightforward scenes of toy-assembly with scans of the discarded strips where the images are scratched and intelligible. The sound mix contributes, too: the landscape murmurs, a static-heavy score disrupts, and the news on TV speaks of war and unrest, as well as an imminent eclipse. Out of the blue, dialogue and songs from old Hindi films sneak in.

The symphony of these elements is exhilarating enough, but there’s more to be mined. The scrap film footage travels from wealthier Indian cities to be dumped on poor villages such as Daspara for recycling, meaning That Cloud Never Left becomes something more than a stylistic exercise in experimentation and nostalgia; there’s a hard economic reality here.

That Cloud Never Left is released on 26 March on True Story.

'No more shame': the French women breaking the law to highlight femicide

 An activist who is part of Les Colleuses movement stands in front of a poster which reads: ‘I believe you’, in Paris, France, in October last year. 

Photograph: Kiran Ridley/Getty Images

Alarming rates of violence have inspired a poster campaign that has spread beyond France to more than 15 countries

by Kim Willsher
THE GUARDIAN

Tue 23 Mar 2021

On a weekday evening, in between coronavirus lockdowns and curfews, Camille, Natacha and Cindy are out with a bright yellow plastic bucket of glue, two large brushes and a wad of A4 paper, each sheet covered with a single letter.

The women, all in their 20s, stop on the main road of this Paris suburb by the wall of what looks like a former bank.

“This is good,” says Camille. It is the signal for a well-practised piece of choreography: Natacha glues; Camille slaps up each lettered sheet; Cindy pastes over it.

They stand back. The message, in black letters on white paper, is clear: “Stop au harcelement de rue” (stop street harassment).

Another wall, another message. Outside the municipal swimming pool it’s paste, slap, paste: “Le consentement n’est pas une option” (consent isn’t optional). On a kiosk under the awnings of the local market, paste, slap, paste: “Stop féminicide”.

Then it is up and out of there to avoid a €68 fine if caught by the police. Another successful, albeit illegal, hit-and-run poster pasting.

For the past two years, similar messages have been appearing on walls all over Paris, Bordeaux, Grenoble, Poitiers, Lyons and other French cities. They are the work of Les Colleuses – the gluers – feminist activists who have found a simple, cheap and effective way to make women’s voices heard.

Camille Lextray became a colleuse afterthe particularly brutal murder of a young woman in September 2019 . Her partner denies her murder.

“Her name was Salomé and she was only 21 when she was beaten to death. The police had been called but they treated it as a domestic and did nothing. Later, they found her body under a pile of rubbish. We put up a collage on the anniversary of her death at the request of her mother,” Lextray said.

The idea for street posters to highlight cases of femicide was dreamed up by Marguerite Stern, a former member of the feminist activist group FEMEN. Stern, then living in Marseille, was deeply shocked by the 2019 killing of Julie Douib, 34, a mother of two children, shot dead at her home by an abusive ex-partner who goes on trial in June and denies her murder.

Douib had reported the man to the police five times before her death, but no action was taken. Stern began putting up posters denouncing violence against women in Marseille, later moving to Paris where she set up a collage collective. 

Activists known as Les Colleuses paste anti-femicide posters on a wall in Paris in October last year. Photograph: Kiran Ridley/Getty Images

In the early days they were called “Collages Contre les Féminicides” (collages against femicide), with groups pasting up the names of women killed by their current or former partner. The street action caught the imagination of women everywhere and spread even beyond France.

“Suddenly we had people all over the place contacting us.” says Camille. “At the last count more than 200 cities, towns and villages in France had collage groups others in London and in more than 15 countries around the world.”

“Anyone can get involved. It takes 10 minutes to write a slogan on a piece of paper, it doesn’t take a lot of money or resources. It’s extremely important for women. It’s about daring to occupy the public space, about women leaving their mark in public.

“One mother had suffered conjugal violence and painted the messages with her young son, went out and stuck them up. It’s taking back control in our lives and it is liberating. No more secrets, no more shame, no more silence. We have constructed our own media platform. This is our loudspeaker.”

France has one of the highest rates of femicide in Europe. In 2019, 146 women were killed in France by a partner or ex-partner. More than 40% of the victims had already suffered violence at the hands of their partner and nearly half of those had reported it to the police.

It’s about daring to occupy the public space, about women leaving their mark in public.

Camille

The term femicide is sometimes defined as the murder of women by men but in France it generally refers to the murder of a woman by a partner, ex-partner or family member.

In 2020, the number of femicides in France fell to 90 for the year – the lowest since such statistics began to be collated 15 years ago. But Caroline De Haas, who started the feminist collective NousToutes in 2018, said that even if the numbers dropped, “nearly 100 deaths is no reason to celebrate”.

About 200,000 women in France are estimated to suffer domestic violence every year, but fewer than one in five go to the police and the problem has worsened during Covid-19 lockdowns, Natacha said.

A hotline for female victims of violence set up by the government received 45,000 calls during the first three-month lockdown last year.

End femicide: 278 dead – the hidden scandal of older women killed by men

“Nobody was prepared for the lockdowns,” Natacha said. “We are sticking up [posters] for ourselves and for the victims and to raise the issue to a wider audience. In doing so we hope we are educating people on the subject of violence done to women and minorities and creating an atmosphere for change.”

The group is fiercely critical of what it sees as the lip service paid by the Macron government on the issue. “We were full of hope: they said they would fight against sexism, and make it a big cause. But it was words and inaction and nothing has changed,” Natacha said. “We have lost confidence in the politicians. We are disillusioned. We have to change the psychology of the patriarchy.”

Camille, Natacha and Cindy glueing up posters 

in Paris demanding an end to femicides. 

Photograph: Kim Willsher/The Guardian

The government responded to the outcry at the alarming levels of femicide in 2019 with new legislation including 40 emergency measures such as electronic bracelets to keep violent abusers from approaching their victims.

Critics say the rules, which took effect last July, are being implemented too slowly.

Marlène Schiappa, a junior minister at the interior ministry, was formerly the country’s equalities minister. She told the Guardian combatting violence against women was a government priority.

“Of course there is progress to be made in France in terms of the rights of women. The subject remains a priority for the government. We must always do more as long as violence exists,” Schiappa said.

Data collected by Eurostat, the EU’s statistics office, for 2017 suggested that Romania and Northern Irelandhad the highest number of women killed by partners as a percentage of the population. But in terms of overall femicides, Eurostat found that Germany and France had the worst records. According to the UK femicide census, a woman is killed by a man who is or was her intimate partner every four days and the rate of fatal violence against women in Britain has shown no signs of decline since the organisation started monitoring in 2009.