Could Brexit break the British film industry?
Two of the most successful independent films of 2015 were British-made. BBC Films’ The Lady in the Van and Film4 Productions’ Carol each grossed around $40 million on budgets of $6 million and $11 million respectively. The Lady in the Van was critically acclaimed, and...
Japanese and Peruvian? UNI’s fusion feast raises eyebrows
Japanese and Peruvian? UNI's fusion feast raises eyebrows - words Chris Zacharia At first glance, some combinations don’t make sense UNI, a restaurant in London's Victoria, serve a Japanese and Peruvian fusion cuisine, known as ‘Nikkei’. With a large Japanese...
St. Lucia Jazz Festival – Kool & the Gang light up an island
Look up St. Lucia on Google Maps and all you can see is a small island in the Caribbean that looks like it’s being bullied by its neighbours, Martinique, Bermuda and Saint Vincent. Flip it to satellite mode and what you see is a lush green blob haunted by wisps of...
Into the Deep Woods – Manchester exhibition explores the forest
Into the Deep Woods - Artists explore the forest in this Manchester exhibition - words Robin Evans In collaboration with a-space in Switzerland, PAPER presents this latest Manchester exhibition Into the Deep Woods. Drawing inspiration from the interpretation of the...
Why it’s time you tried diving in the Maldives
Why it's time you tried diving in the Maldives - Chris Zacharia I’m floating through the water when a boulder-sized rock beneath me begins to move. Startled, I struggle to turn my body around in the water. As the rock continues to rise, I notice two pairs of...
bluedot Festival 2016 – Out of this World!
The Jodrell Bank observatory has been home to some serious musical happenings over the years, from Flaming Lips to Sigur Rós. But with the inaugural Bluedot festival, the stunning location hit its musical stride in emotional style. The boutique festival's three days...
Meadows in the Mountains – Small festival, big impact
I’m stumbling up a mountain path, following Craig Charles’ son to witness a traditional Bulgarian peasant song. Girls dressed in pagan furs and animal masks twist and twirl around us; my photographer, dressed in an Uzbeki kaftan, is demanding I roll him a cigarette;...
Black Roe Mayfair – Hawaiian food is finally here
Black Roe Mayfair review by Chris Zacharia It’s hard to resist the exotic. Especially when it comes to food. We all flirt with the idea that by eating something from far away a part of us will, momentarily at least, be transported too. So we slave away over...
Paris is undergoing a face lift – but not everyone is happy
The "Gare du Nord is such a dump compared to St Pancras” insult has stung Parisians ever since the Queen opened London’s magnificent Victorian Gothic Eurostar terminal in 2007. Not to be upstaged by its cross-channel rival, in 2014 the SNCF launched "Plan Botox", a...
Sid and Nancy film – A tale of self destruction
Sid and Nancy film - A story of self destruction restored for a new generation - words Paul Risker 2016 marks the 40th Anniversary of an historic moment in music history. On June 4th 1976, at the Manchester Lesser Free Trade Hall The Sex Pistols performed a gig that...
Micko Westmoreland on shoplifting & his song Schmescos
Micko Westmoreland's latest track 'Schmescos' is a riotous post-punk celebration, an investigation of the adrenaline-soaked thrills of supermarket shoplifting. As Micko acknowledges in this article explaining his motivation for writing the song, it's a subject that...
The Hard Stop docufilm – The riots that followed a killing
The Hard Stop docufilm - The riots that followed a killing - words Paul Risker The fatal police shooting of Mark Duggan in Tottenham in 2011 sparked widespread riots as the country witnessed the tumultuous consequences of division that lay beneath its surface. “In...
Meet Obicà, Britain’s first mozzarella bar
As restaurant titles go, ‘mozzarella bar’ is up there with ‘taqueria’ and ‘noodle joint’. It sounds frivolous, niche, unforgivably extravagant. If the night starts at a mozzarella bar, where on earth does it end? [gallery royalslider="1"...
Shuang Shuang, the restaurant where you cook your own lobster
The words “Lobster Tom Yum” were on a board outside a nondescript concrete building, which looked like no other in Chinatown. There was no comfortingly gaudy, red and gold façade, no monster plastic-fronted menu with pictures of what was on offer and there wasn’t a...
Interview with Director Rebecca Miller on her film Maggie’s Plan
A decade on since her directorial debut feature, filmmaker Rebecca Miller has just sent her fifth feature Maggie’s Plan out into the world. Miller is a filmmaker who does not treat the filmmaking process with reverence, preferring to engage with it as an art form that...