Get curated editors’ picks, peeks behind the scenes, film recommendations and more.
The city of Kabul is often associated with conflict and misery, but recently a group of kids has used its war-torn ruins as the backdrop for a new obsession: skateboarding. This film follows the Skateistan project, an NGO that runs a skate park in Kabul, and offers lessons to local kids that want to learn how to skate. Remarkably, in a country where women are generally excluded from participating in sports, nearly 40 per cent of the skaters are girls, and they more than hold their own on the city’s ramps and rails.
Director: Orlando von Einsiedel
video
Technology and the self
Greetings from Green Bank – the small town where modern technology is banned
10 minutes
video
Stories and literature
What makes John Keats’s ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’ so enduringly powerful?
10 minutes
video
Dance and theatre
How a Noh mask-maker summons a lifelike face from a single block of wood
16 minutes
video
The ancient world
What wine vessels reveal about politics and luxury in ancient Athens and Persia
16 minutes
video
Art
David Goldblatt captured the contradictions of apartheid in stark black and white
15 minutes
video
Love and friendship
When drawing your muse hundreds of times becomes an exercise in love
7 minutes
video
Thinkers and theories
Is simulation theory a way to shirk responsibility for the world we’ve created?
13 minutes
video
Biology
A dazzling slice-by-slice exploration of wood exposes hidden patterns and hues
2 minutes
video
Family life
In Rwanda, Sébastien finds traces of personal history in the wake of national tragedy
21 minutes