Culture

Sidelined by the Oscars, Mona Fastvold’s epic musical about the founder of the Shakers deserves notice as a strange and powerful portrait of spirituality.

If I told anyone about Paolo, they would find it hard to believe he is a sock puppet, although my sister doesn’t like it if I speak of him this way. He is her muse. Her guide. I try to tell her she is past this now. Think how far she has come. And she has.

After two decades of raging against the machine, Freeplay – once the flagship for indie Australian games – has announced that this year will probably be its last.

The Pitt does not tidily resolve – this award-winning medical procedural is distinguished by its depiction of individual and collective striving against the tide.

In Australia, controversy is treated as an institutional failure rather than cultural vitality. The result is a narrowing of ambition, purpose and the place of literature in our society. The door is opened to mediocrity.

Acclaimed dancer and choreographer Aakash Odedra fuses autobiography with the ancient spiritual traditions of Kathak.

Emerald Fennell’s ‘Wuthering Heights’ trades on clichés of erotic transgression and is most powerful as a reflection of Hollywood’s crisis of legitimacy.