Artist of the Week: Lydia Free
Lydia is a second-year at Keble studying Italian and Linguistics. In MT22, she co-founded Peach Productions and had her directorial debut with Wishbone. In HT23, she went on to direct Every Brilliant Thing, and last week finished directing Hedda Gabler, which sold out two days before opening nig
Voices from the Aral Sea: Oxford Students Take On Oral History
Over the summer, three students from St Hugh’s College – James Chapman, Annie Liddell and Oscar Fraser Turner – will be recording an oral history documentary about the Aral Sea crisis, an environmental disaster currently unfolding in Uzbekistan. At first glance, oral history might seem an odd
Behind the Scenes of ‘Breakwater’
In 1982, a group of Oxford students came together to produce the University’s first feature-length film, Privileged. Why has it taken 40 years to make another? Jemima Chen had the same question, and the answer, it turns out, is because it’s very hard to do. Having raised about £20,000 through
Artist of the Week: Kilian Meissner
Tell me about yourself: Hi, I’m Kilian. I’m a third-year classicist at New, and I have a conducting problem. Aside from music, I also play the viola. How did you first get into conducting? The story I like to tell is that I was very lucky to be playing in the National Children̵
The Isis interviews Tan Pin Pin, award-winning Singaporean filmmaker
Interviewing a consummate documentary maker is a dangerous game. Only ten minutes into our interview do I realise Tan Pin Pin has been fielding all the questions, and that I’ve been giving her a dull, derivative account of my university life (Shakespeare, procrastination, The Isis Magazine). Hoist
Artist of the Week: Eulalia D’Souza
Tell us a bit about yourself. I’m Eulalia-Marie. I turned 21 yesterday. My parents are from India, and some of my grandparents are from Kenya. I write poetry, and I want to write prose but I suck at big projects. I have a really short attention span. I call it a “sunburnt attention span” as [&
Interview: Alexandra Byrne, Oscar-winning Costume Designer
Alexandra Byrne is an English costume designer, since the 80s she has been designing costumes for theatre, TV, and film. Her career has spanned many different genres as well as mediums, from period dramas (1995 Hamlet, 1998 Elizabeth, 2004 Finding Neverland, 2020 Emma) to Marvel films (2012 The Aven
Artist of the Week: Leah Aspden
This week we spoke to Leah Aspden, a 3rd year English student at St Anne’s, who does “too much theatre, probably”. She is an actor, comedian, and the new President of the Oxford University Dramatic Society. Hi Leah! We’ve seen you play Macbeth in Macbeth, Lucifer in Immaculate, and the
What We Talk About When We Talk About Oxford
When critiquing the Blue Guide — the iconic series of travel guides published from 1918 — Roland Barthes writes that “the human life of a country disappears to the exclusive benefit of its monuments”. Perhaps nowhere are his words more relevant than in our own ‘city of dreaming spires’.