RITA DI SANTO contemplates two films about journalism that opened this year’s festival
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In the footsteps of Honore Daumier
Cartoons: (L to R) Citizen Chicane and Songi
GEOFF BOTTOMS applauds a world-class production King Lear that pits late feudalism against a rising bourgeoisie
MARY CONWAY keeps up with the sheer pace of a drama about the terrible gap between sanitised reporting and real-life turmoil of race and gender
New releases from Brian Fallon, Antony Szmierek and Hollow Hand
APURBA CHATTERJEE explains how British artists in India used the “picturesque” to reshape colonial landscapes and celebrate imperial power
PAUL DONOVAN welcomes a revival of Reginald Rose’s classic play that reminds us of the fundamental need for trials with juries
“FREEDOM and justice for all are infinitely more to be desired than pedestals for a few,” once said Honore Daumier, the legendary French cartoonist and caricaturist, in what is movingly reminiscent of Labour’s rallying cry, under Jeremy Corbyn, “for the many not the few.”
To illustrate what he meant, in 1831 Daumier “put” the king Louis-Philippe on a pedestal only to mercilessly ridicule him, to much popular acclaim.
The cartoon of the monarch, in the comic journal La Caricature, depicted him as the hideously gluttonous Gargantua, a household personage in France and protagonist of the 16th century satire by Francois Rabelais.
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