Part Two: English stew

Still in documentary mode, the Maysles' have a retrospective at the NFT this month including a talk this Friday by Michael Chaiken of the Maysles Institute in Harlem, New York. As you'd expect from the NFT there are loads of rare gems here. Shane Meadows gets a retrospective too. Also, a South Bank Show on TV. His latest This Is England opened a few weeks ago to unanimously rave reviews. I first viewed it at last year's Times BFI London Film Festival but was in two minds about it. On a recent second viewing I realised why. Although the film is set in Thatcher's 80's Britain, Meadows' title suggests that things haven't changed that much. And I agree with him. But it's a very emotive subject in this country at the moment with the knives out for anyone who dissents from the views of their friends and colleagues. The BBC's award winning investigative doco slot Panorama broadcast Monday night a provocative piece about the town of Blackburn in Lancashire. Its MP and also Leader of the House of Commons, Jack Straw, recently enraged many of his constituents with his view that the wearing of the Muslim veil segregated rather than integrated communities. In September, the Education Minister Alan Johnson has announced a policy of 'community cohesion' endeavouring to make schools multi-ethnic in Britain.

But many British are very wary of these ideas(l). And this was reflected in the recent council elections (a bit like the US primaries) that dealt Labour a devasting blow. This is the context in which This Is England is being seen. But it is very difficult to transcend this context and I'm not sure whether Meadows is quite sure either of which note to strike. It's essentially Meadows' autobiographical coming of age film with the unforgettable Thomas Turgoose as the 12-year-old skinhead Shaun in northern England. (A Guide to Recognising Your Saints looks very tame in comparison.) His dad's been killed in the Falklands war, and though he has a nice mum, he falls in with a motley gang of adult skinheads, who kit Shaun out in red braces and natty shirt. Meadows was championed early on by producer Stephen Woolley after he saw a competition short. He wasn't wrong. At times, This Is England could be Scorsese with its superb pairing of violence and humour. Shaun's kissing lessons with the Boy Georgie girl Smell, short for Michelle (Rosamund Hanson) are brilliant. And Danny Cohen's cinematography (16mm transferred to 35mm) suggests Italian neo-realism more than Terence Davies or the doco-fiction cinema of Ken Loach or Alan Clarke whose Made in Britain is probably the closest British film in comparison. And yet. I still have problems with This Is England. The redemptive ending of Shaun relegating the nationalistic St.George's flag to the seaweed of the sea feels, in the current climate, a party political broadcast for unity and understanding. All the film's characters are meticulously written to show their frailty and confusion of political direction. The king pin of the group Combo (Stephen Graham), having encouraged Shaun to be racist towards a Pakistani shopkeeper, ends up in the clink (we assume) for threatening the guy with a machete. On release, he tries unsuccessfully to make a mends with his ex-girlfriend, presenting her with a little box he made whilst in prison. He weeps. Later he turns nutter on the Jamaican of the gang, Milky (Andrew Shim) later pleading "It's not my fault, I didn't mean it." "They fear us because we're the voice of the people," he says earlier on in the film.

The wounds Milky suffers are for real, and if Combo had an even more 'off' day with the Pakistani, the guy would be dead. As an audience we are made to feel we've had the cathartic experience of a Greek tragedy, though no tragedy has actually taken place. The film's culture mixing of 'ska' music gives way more to a melancholy found in the classical music of British composers such as Finzi and Vaughan-Williams, though none is used. There's no character in the film such as Judi Dench's bitter, malevolent teacher in Notes on a Scandal: a monster you empathise with rather than sympathise.

Mark Wallinger's yesterday short listed Turner Prize State Britain suffers from a similar problem, I feel. (South Bank Show link) In Tate Britain's central hall, the Duveen Galleries, the artist has recreated peace campaigner Brian Haw's Parliament Square protest with its placards and nick-nacks. On 23 May 2006, most of Haw's anti-Iraq war protest was removed after the passing of a government law prohibiting unauthorised demonstrations within one kilometre of Parliament Square. If taken literally, the edge of this zone bisects Tate Britain. Wallinger has been a provocative artist over the years and his latest is no less impressive. However, there's something quite sanitised about walking around the installation. For those, and there will be many, who never passed by Haw's Parliament Square protest, it will undoubtedly be thought provoking. It reminds me though of Umberto Eco's 'simulacra' essay of the postcard and the wax-works becoming realer than the real when the original is unattainable. Maybe a video of the protest's dismantling, or rather a re-enactment, might have worked better. As it is, the work isn't abstract enough to exist in a parallel universe, nor annoying enough to upset anyone. In Oz capital, Canberra, the 'Aboriginal embassy' as it was known camped provocatively on the lawns of what is now the Old Parliament House. It was on an axis between parliament, the lake and the War memorial across from it. It was moved to the secluded trees to the west. Maybe Wallinger should have put his recreation in formaldehyde like Damien Hirst's dead menagerie - adding a touch of Molly Dineen. I don't know. "It's the opposite. We [the British] pretend we're moving forward by severing ourselves from the past," Dineen said in her Nightwaves interview,rebutting Philip Dodd's idea that the British are amnesiacs.

I thought about this the other Friday night as artist Louise Wilson gave a talk about Bill Brandt's WW2 photographs during his London stay. We view them now as respectful historians. How shocking were they when first shown? Remember the US outrage at the photograph of the falling man capturing his leap from the burning 9/11 Twin Towers? When does a piece of journalism become a work of art?

Another unmissable NFT retrospective is the neo-realist Roberto Rossellini. And just out is the DVD of Fellini's The White Sheik (Lo Sceicco bianco) 1952. Fellini met Rossellini in 1942 and worked on several scripts Rome -Open City, Paisa. After La Strada (1954), the Italian Marxists accused Fellini of betraying neo-realism. I Vitelloni ("big slabs of veal") of 1953 was about the alienation of middle-class kids. In The White Sheik, a honeymooning wife (Brunella Bovo) sneaks away to deliver a fan letter to her soap-opera magazine idol accidentally finding herself face to face with the fanzine editor. "Real life is made of dreams (La vera vita è quella dei sogni.)," says the editor. But later in the film the naive bride discovers that dreams can also be "a bottomless pit" after finding herself on the film set and being seduced by the the butcher boy turned 'B movie' Valentino. Leopoldo Trieste, who plays the hapless Chaplinesque husband Ivan, was a screenwriter for Franco Rossi and Pierto Germi among others. But his puppy-dog eyes caught Fellini's when he was scouring for new talent. The film was also the first collaboration with the iconic composer Nino Rota. Good extras on the disc, including the erotic secret spaghetti recipe of Fellini's wife Giuliette Masina (she's the googly eyed prostitute Cabiria in White Sheik, and of course later in Nights of Cabiria), and an interview with keeper of Fellini scripts at Indiana Uni's library in America's mid-West. How very Fellini. The filming of the boat at sea in the film is a trick for low-budget filmmakers to remember. The DVD has a very underwater sound, and in Fellini fashion together with the post-voice dubbing, I didn't really mind. Actress Isabella Rossellini has an exhibition about her father at the Italian Cultural Institute and the Westbrook Gallery (8 Windmill Street, London W1T 2JE (7-26 May). The photographs also appear in a book In the Name of the Father, the Daughter and the Holy Ghosts, published by Shirmer/Mosel in 2006 in Germany and by Haus Publishing in Britain.