Filmgoers born after 1997 are reviving cinemas’ hopes of survival. They tell us about the social experience where ‘there’s absolutely no commitment to chat’

People born between 1997 and 2012 are now more frequent cinemagoers than some older age groups, according to a US-based survey by Fandango, with 87% having seen at least one film in a cinema in the last 12 months compared with 58% of baby boomers.

With this in mind we asked young people about why they love the cinema.

There are echoes of both Kill Bill and Thelma and Louise in Aleshea Harris’s sharply told tale of sisters heading to kill their father

An R-rated suspense thriller, Is God Is, also follows in the tradition of female buddy movies like Thelma & Louise. Kara Young and Mallori Johnson star as Racine and Anaia, young adult twins who still bear the physical and emotional scars of a house fire that nearly consumed them as girls. The blaze sent them into the foster care system and condemned them to a lifetime of stares, derision and pity – leaving them isolated, self-reliant and deeply embittered.

Their isolation is broken when a letter arrives from their mother, Ruby (Vivica A Fox), whom they had presumed dead in the fire but who is now nearing death from the far graver injuries she suffered in the inferno. Reunited at her bedside, Ruby reveals that the fire was an act of domestic violence committed by their father (Sterling K Brown) and asks her daughters to avenge her. “Make your daddy dead,” Ruby instructs them. “Real dead.” Anaia, the shy, “ugly” younger twin, recoils from the request; Racine, the fearless and more conventionally “beautiful” sister, embraces it eagerly, setting them on a Kill Bill-style quest for closure.

Link to US-based site, whose operators were fined £950,000 by Ofcom, appears in Google’s search results and can be accessed in UK

Google has denied breaching the Online Safety Act by promoting a “nihilistic” suicide forum associated with 164 deaths in the UK where it is supposed to be banned.

The UK’s internet regulator fined the forum’s US-based operator £950,000 because the site, which “presents a material risk of significant harm”, can still be accessed in the UK despite British laws criminalising encouraging or assisting suicide.

ROME (ANP/RTR) - Paus Leo XIV heeft kritiek geuit op Europese landen die meer geld uitgeven aan hun krijgsmacht. Hij zei tegen universiteitsstudenten in Rome dat de wereld "door oorlogen verminkt" raakt. Hij zei ook dat de term 'defensiebestedingen' eigenlijk niet goed is.

"Laten we niet spreken van 'defensie' bij een herbewapening die leidt tot grotere spanningen en onveiligheid, ten koste gaat van investeringen in onderwijs en gezondheid, verraad is van het vertrouwen in diplomatie en de elite verrijkt die niets geeft om het algemeen belang", aldus de paus.

Sinds hij vorig jaar paus werd, heeft Leo veel kritiek geuit op de oorlogen die gevochten worden in de wereld. Hij botste daar eerder over met de Amerikaanse regering. Hij riep de 110.000 studenten van de Universiteit Sapienza in Rome op om zich niet te laten "opsluiten binnen ideologie en landsgrenzen". "Wees samen met mij en met vele broeders en zusters vredestichters."

KOPENHAGEN (ANP) - De Deense koningin Margrethe is donderdag opgenomen in het ziekenhuis met pijn op haar borst. Dat meldt het Deense hof op de officiële website. De koningin is "moe, maar ze houdt moed", aldus het koninklijk hof.

Margrethe moet dit weekend in het Rigshospitalet blijven "ter observatie en verder onderzoek". Begin mei was de 86-jarige koningin ook opgenomen in het Rigshospitalet vanwege verkoudheidsklachten.

Dertien jaar lagen er worsten, sauzen en broodspreads van Mister Kitchen in de supermarkt. Daarmee hielp dit kleine bedrijf de winkelketens hun assortiment te vernieuwen. Dat is nu voorbij. Zes lessen over de rol van kleine uitdagers in het grote supermarktspel.

Gisteravond op de digitale opiniepagina van de Volkskrant: een vrijwel volkomen onbegrijpelijk stuk van de Dolle Mina's over/tegen/voor 'performative male feminism' (onder het motto: alles om het maar niet over performative male Chris Jude te hoeven hebben). U weet wel (of niet, hopelijk) wat performative male feminism is. Dat zijn van die mannen die de hele tijd schreeuwen dat ze zelf ook feminist zijn om in de broekjes van vrouwelijke feministen te komen maar er ondertussen stiekempjes ouderwetsche denkbeelden op na houden. Zoals Beau van Erven Dorens, zoals Erben Wennemars en zoals Gijs Rademakers. Daar lijken (sorry we hebben gisteren te veel gedronken om dit zeker te weten) de Dolle Mina's helemaal klaar mee te zijn. "Performatief feminisme zorgt er óók voor dat mannen niet worden verwelkomd in het feminisme. Want als je niet meer kunt vertrouwen op de intentie achter iemands uitspraken, hoe bouw je dan solidariteit op?"

Maar nu komt ie. Mannen zouden een voorbeeld moeten nemen aan Eric Corton. "Eric Corton stipte het al aan in het feministische boek Het Minafest: oprecht feministische mannen zijn vaak stiller, zonder podium en online content." Ja ho wacht ho even. Is Eric Corton niet de man die vorig jaar nog met zijn performatieve reedt op de radio kwam om te praten over zijn performatieve brief aan de Volkskrant met performatieve onzin over performatieve stoom die uit zijn performatieve oren, zijn performatieve neus, en performatieve andere gaten kwam? Bij Eric Corton gaat alles altijd over Eric Corton, die man is één grote performatie. Eric Cortion is nooit stil, Eric Corton heeft altijd een podium en Eric Corton verspreidt aan de lopende band online content. Sorry (not sorry) voor het mansplainen maar als je als vrouwenbeweging aan de slurf van Eric Corton blijft hangen, kun je net zo goed meteen je baan opzeggen, de stofzuiger pakken en achter het aanrecht een gezonde doch voedzame maaltijd klaarmaken voor HET PATRIARCHAAT. Eric Corton hee. Kom nou.

Faig Ahmed is known for his vibrant textile sculptures that take traditional Azerbaijani ornamental carpets as starting point, often appearing to melt, pool, or glitch. In his current solo presentation at the 61st Venice Biennale, where he is representing Azerbaijan, the Baku-based artist branches out into more conceptual territory, exploring science, alchemy, spirituality, and perceptions of self in a sprawling, maze-like installation called The Attention.

Curated by Gwendolyn Collaço, the exhibition expands upon Ahmed’s interest in the dialectic between digital processes and time-honored, hand-crafted techniques. The artist considers how advanced scientific inquiry, such as quantum physics and neuroscience, relates to how we “articulate cosmologies of belonging,” says a statement.

Ornamental carpets continue as a through-line in The Attention, undulating, scrunching, distending, and balling up through a series of rooms. They even extend outdoors, creating a kind of continuous runner that spills out of doorways and stretches into long lines of color.

“Ahmed bridges the 15th-century Hurufi mystic tradition—which viewed the universe as a coded text—with modern information theory,” says a statement. “By channeling the ‘human energy’ of the weave, he uses this ancient textile paradigm to address our era’s information overload and collective grief.”

Ahmed taps into a theoretical framework coined by physicist John Wheeler that can be summed up, rather enigmatically, as “it from bit.” It’s a short way of describing an approach to information theory that string theorists and quantum mechanics researchers have tested. In other words, “…every it—every particle, every field of force, even the spacetime continuum itself—derives its function, its meaning, its very existence entirely—even if in some contexts indirectly—from the apparatus-elicited answers to yes-or-no questions, binary choices, bits.”

In The Attention, the binaries of “it from bit” are not only present in the way digital methods and the physical labor of the loom converge but also in Ahmed’s interests.

“I have always been drawn to exploring consciousness for as far back as I can remember,” he says in a statement, continuing:

This search has guided my attention in two directions: on one hand, toward science—biology, physics, and mathematics—and on the other, toward spirituality, art, poetry, and creative expression. At first glance, these fields appear opposite, even contradictory. One form of knowledge is directed out-ward, toward what can be measured, calculated, observed, and verified. The other turns inward, toward the subjective, the unprovable, and the inexpressible. It is an experience that cannot be confirmed or fully shared with another, just as it is impossible to truly know what it feels like to be someone else.

Merging 15th-century Hurufi mysticism with science, digital interfaces with the analog, and introspective personal experiences with objective data, Ahmed’s carpets guide visitors through the immersive space. The largest one, a monumental machine-woven piece, is titled “I Can Contain Both Worlds But I Do Not Fit Into This One.” It forms what the artist describes as a “breathing body” that climbs the architecture, knots itself, collapses, and spills. “Ancestors,” a faintly anthropomorphic wall piece that glows psychedelically in black light is woven by hand. And a work called “Entropy Altar” uses a quantum random number generator to translate visitor presence into an evolving language.

The Attention remains on view through November 22 at Campo della Tana, Castello 2124/A–2125, Venice. See more on Ahmed’s Instagram and Vimeo.

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