Art Craft and Leisure news

Footage from social media shows the moment glass doors outside a shopping centre in Nanning, southern China, shattered as fans waited to see actor Zhang Linghe on Sunday.

The 28-year-old, who stars in Chinese historial drama Pursuit of Jade, was due to appear at a Molsion eyewear event.

Other videos from social media show packed crowds gathered around balconies within the mall. Organisers later cancelled the in-person event and moved it online.

In a statement on Sunday night, Linghe’s studio said: “The brand event originally scheduled for today has been temporarily rescheduled, and we sincerely apologize for any inconvenience caused.

“Everyone’s safety is always our top priority.”

It added that the actor and his studio would reimburse travel and accommodation costs for fans who travelled from afar to attend the event.

Molsion said medical check-ups had been arranged for fans who “sustained minor injuries”, it added it would upgrade safety measures to ensure “smooth and safe” future events.

Gemma June Howell, a writer, editor and cultural critic based in Swansea, offers a personally-slanted look at the social issues raised in Effi O Blaenau, a new Welsh movie adapted from hit play Iphigenia In Splott and released this month.

Effi O Blaenau opens with sounds of my youth, growing up in an ex-coalmining housing estate in south Wales – dirt bikes, barking dogs, dance music. But it’s set in the northern town Blaenau Ffestiniog: slate country, “the town that roofed the world”, and kindred community shaped by a different industry yet marked with the same inheritance of hardship, solidarity and endurance.

My father stood on the picket lines at Ffestiniog in the 1980s and that sense of working-class identity still lives on. As Effi, played by Leisa Gwenllian, puts it: “Blaenau Ffestiniog. Tough place, strong people. No choice really, sink or swim.”

This film version of Gary Owen’s Iphigenia In Splott gains new insight, shifting the story from urban Cardiff to rural north Wales. In Splott, the play was a fierce portrait of class and austerity. In Blaenau, in the hands of director Marc Evans, it opens up new perspectives on distance, isolation and a healthcare postcode lottery. It’s also significant that this is a Welsh-language film – a bold choice that presents a grittier, darker side of industrial rural Wales rather than conforming to a romanticised How Green Was My Valley image.

Effi is clearly cast as a ‘chavette’ character: all puffer coat, hoop earrings and raw gumption, her bright defiance stark against the bleak backdrop of post-industrial Wales.

Gwenllian gives an astounding, standout performance in the role, and there’s real comfort in seeing young women like Effi on the big screen. She’s a Gen Z streamer – capturing everything on her iPhone, including her baby’s ultrasound scan – while simultaneously caught in a 90s timewarp of dated décor, abandoned sofas and limited opportunities. The world has moved on, but not for young women like Effi. 

In one scene, after finding out she’s ‘up the duff’, Effi crosses the village to the shop and empties a carrier bag of coins onto the counter. “Vodka please!” she says. It’s brilliant, darkly comic and a painfully authentic portrait of numbing the pain of existence. Yet the film never reduces her to defeat: Effi is wild, vivacious and shameless in the best possible way.

Like Alma’s Not Normal and Rain Dogs, this film rejects respectability, yet she’s still judged and exploited. At the hospital, she is discriminated against because she has no husband, no visible advocate, no agency and no social power. Through a series of systemic failures and prejudices, she is let down by an institution created by a Welshman for people just like her.

Effi is placed alone in a ward under construction, then carted off in an ambulance during a snowstorm, without a midwife. The issue of maternity care feels even more heightened in a rural setting, where services are stretched and support is often further away. Geography itself becomes another layer to the struggle. 

The film also debunks the myth of the compo scrounger, and like many working-class people, Effi accepts that she doesn’t have a voice, absorbing the injustice rather than exploiting an NHS already on its knees. “Less money, less beds… that’s the way it is,” becomes a grim refrain for modern Wales, capturing the gaping hole between the founding principles of the NHS and the reality we face today.

Watching Effi, I immediately thought of a line from my novel The Crazy Truth which sheds light on protagonist Girlo’s own predicament as a struggling writer: “It wasn’t that she couldn’t write, just that she was made to feel like she didn’t have the right to.” The tragedy here is that these young women have not failed, but instead have been unfairly shaped by a society that teaches them not to expect better; not to expect care, or dignity, or even the right to be listened to.

In this sense, stories like this one do something crucial: they insist that working-class lives are not marginal, disposable or undeserving of attention and space. They remind us of the flaws in humanity, and that every life deserves to be heard, seen and cared for.

Effi O Blaenau belongs to a vital tradition of socially engaged storytelling from I, Daniel Blake to Streetlife, Ms Rhymney Valley and Owen Sheers’ To Provide All People. In that sense, it also feels like a companion piece to Michael Sheen’s Nye: a reminder of how precious the NHS is, and how it needs modernisation and support. 

For all its heartbreak, this is ultimately a hopeful film. At moments, looking over the lake, Effi breathes in the chance of a different future. Wales needs films like this: stories that show lives too often ignored and insist that survival can be a form of resistance.

Effi O Blaenau opens in the UK on Fri 19 June. 

It was funded by Creative Wales and S4C and was filmed in Blaenau Ffestiniog, Caernarfon and Port Talbot.

This article was commissioned by Film Hub Wales as part of its Made In Wales project, which celebrates films with Welsh connections, thanks to funding from Creative Wales and the National Lottery via the BFI.

Info: here

words GEMMA JUNE HOWELL

What started as a Proms concert in the Albert Hall, to mark 20 years of Pete Tong at Radio 1, has now evolved into the DJ’s iconic Ibiza Classics show – which returns to Cardiff Castle this month. Amy Ford spoke to Pete about his shows over the past decade and what’s to come for the dance scene. 

In the 11 years since veteran DJ and dance music tastemaker Pete Tong launched his Ibiza Classics concept, with the Heritage Orchestra joined onstage by a carousel of guest vocalists as Tong manned the decks, the canon of Ibiza classics have evolved – meaning a whole new era of club bangers have been added to the setlist.

“The show does feature contemporary classics as well as classic classics,” Pete tells me, in the course of reflecting on summers spent DJing in Ibiza when the island’s rave-magnet status was relatively new. That, and myriad other factors, has ensured the house scene has become more mainstream – often of a piece with pop culture.

“The biggest change from when I started is it’s not a secret anymore. It definitely felt underground – you kind of had to be in the know.”

The popularity of club music goes hand-in-hand with sheer musical overpopulation – and, in a mostly financially straitened industry, the harsh realities behind aiming for success music in an environment where “instead of 100 tracks a week, you’ve got a billion tracks a week. But if you can just navigate your way through all the averageness, there are gems there.”

Pete has high hopes for the future of DJing and club culture: success will continue to find DJs who generate fans, get those fans to stick with them, create great parties and, as he puts it, “move the culture in a meaningful way.” It’s the likes of Max and Luke Dean, Josh Baker, Pawsa and Michael Bibi who are paving the way for the future of DJing, he thinks. “There are a lot of DJs that are here today, gone tomorrow. They’re the real deal.”

After decades of playing out, on multiple continents, Pete has perfected his post-show ritual. Back in the day, this might have included afterparties until the early hours of the morning; nowadays he has a different way of winding down. “Usually, it involves getting on my bike and riding. I’m also really into meditation – I’ve been doing that for over 10 years. Silence is good!” he smiles, only half-serious you’d imagine.

Regarding his aural diet, Pete has been broadening his musical horizons: “Neo-classical, new jazz and film soundtracks. Max Richter’s Hamnet score is amazing.” Electronic music remains very important too, of course, and in high rotation – central as it is to the average Pete Tong working day.

Ibiza Classics is touring the UK again this summer, heading to Cardiff this month. Pete’s got fond memories of his last performance at Cardiff Castle, in 2018: local boy Geraint Thomas had just won the Tour de France, and the crowd reacted with delight when his image popped up on the big screens. “It’s definitely one of my favourite places to play.”

The Ibiza Classics format was a gamble when it debuted – the pop music/orchestral crossover gambit has mushroomed since – and its evolution makes it all the more special for Pete. “I didn’t think we were going to be doing it 10 years later. The core audience now is maybe a little bit different to what it was then.” Whatever may have changed, though, Pete Tong Ibiza Classics is still a vibrant celebration of dance music’s history – and having it back in one of the big man’s favourite venues is a bonus.

Pete Tong Ibiza Classics, Cardiff Castle, Thurs 11 June.

Tickets: £55. Info: here

words AMY FORD