Reviving and Reclaiming Culture

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With Tina Daheley. To mark 6 months of the new government in Argentina, writer Pola Oloixarac considers the Mauricio Macri administration’s attitude towards the arts. She finds that, not for the first time, the Argentine government is championing the art of the past, in order to influence the future. In Iran a new, independent online drama has been transporting viewers back to the 1950s. Set in the time of the military coup that overthrew Prime Minister Mosaddeq and bolstered the rule of the Shah, it depicts scenes that might be considered shocking by Iranian standards. Cultural critic & BBC Persian producer Maghsood Salehi tells us what sets Shahrzad apart from the competition, amid a fashion for nostalgia on Iran’s TV- & computer- screens. In a new commission for the Royal Shakespeare Company, British Nigerian poet and playwright Inua Ellams has written a prequel to the Shakespeare’s The Tempest. For The Cultural Frontline, Inua sets out his case for righting- and re-writing- the wrongs of the original play and describes how his version reinvents the character of Caliban. The possum skin cloak in Aboriginal culture was both a garment and a canvas, on which the stories of the land and its people were inscribed. In an interview produced for The Cultural Frontline by Jarni Blakkarly, the Aboriginal artist Tiriki Onus shares his determination to revive the custom and the craft of traditional possum skin cloak-making in Australia. (Photo: The Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes in Buenos Aires Credit: Juan Mabromata/ AFP/ Getty)