Pleasance at EICC, Edinburgh
Visual artist Ornagh conjures a psychedelic, mixed-reality vision preoccupied with identity, sexuality and body image

What happens when theatre meets film? It is a question artists keep returning to. The West Country japesters of Forkbeard Fantasy talk about “crossing the celluloid divide”. Chile’s Teatro Cinema puts live actors in noirish settings. And cult favourite 1927 mixes real performers and retro animations.

Now, with high-intensity colour, psychedelic landscapes and trippy imagination comes visual artist Ornagh and a show unlike any in Edinburgh. In The Ode Islands, she performs while sandwiched between two screens to give three-dimensional depth to her mixed-reality creations. A nightmarish vision of googly-eyed monsters, electric seas and an Alice in Wonderland sense of instability, it takes us on a fascinating digital journey, with Ornagh trapped in the midst of it all. Her stated interest is in freedom, even as she pulls us ever deeper into an imprisoning lair.

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The next pick in our series of writers highlighting their favourite comfort watches is a box office dud from the 2000s that became a queer cult classic

“Are you kidding me?” snaps Ms Petrie, Holland Taylor’s power-suit loving intelligence chief, towards the end of the 2004 spy satire DEBS. “We conduct a nationwide manhunt for you, and you’re boning the suspect?!”

In a nutshell, this is the basic premise of Angela Robinson’s 2004 debut feature film, a critically panned box office flop which has transformed into a cult classic over the last 20 years thanks to its refreshing and cheery nonchalance towards the subject of sexuality. The heavily sanitised trailer, which erased virtually all evidence of a sapphic storyline, meant that DEBS passed me by for years. Now, I’m making up for lost time.

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PC; Neoludic Games
Real titles from Shakespeare to John Green line the shelves of your seaside shop in a rhythmic, mellow management simulator worth relaxing into

It is a rare thing in my experience that a resource management simulator, set in a retail or service environment, can strike the precise tone and pace that manages to evoke both interest and relaxation. As a player who previously worked as a bookseller, and currently is a novelist, I am poised to be extremely stressed out by a game set in a mobile bookshop. However, Tiny Bookshop is crafted with such care and balance that I found myself losing hours to the gentle pace and tiny puzzles and sheer escapism of the world it presents.

The setup is simple, and one that is common to many games in the post Stardew Valley era of “cosy” games . You throw in your old life and open a shop selling tiny things you are passionate about to a bustling little community full of interesting characters who you progressively develop relationships with by providing them with goods and services. Days, weeks and seasons pass, the world grows richer and more interesting around you, the stakes rise and fall, a tiny economy evolves from your business.

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Hashim Nasr’s striking images are winning awards and gaining attention across the globe

‘For me, red is always a representation of blood and losing people, so I tend to use this red fabric to represent our trauma.” The Sudanese photographer Hashim Nasr is talking about how the war in his homeland has influenced his work.

Before the start of the conflict in 2023, the figures in his photographs were often covered in flowers or holding heart shapes, challenging stereotypes of masculinity. Now, flowing red fabric representing trauma, loss and bloodshed is a frequent motif.

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Leicester-born producer was editor of BBC children’s show for more than 20 years and introduced Blue Peter badge

Biddy Baxter, the pioneering television producer who transformed Blue Peter into a national institution, has died at 92, according to the BBC.

Born Joan Maureen Baxter in Leicester, she studied at St Mary’s College, Durham University, where she saw recruitment flyers for the BBC.

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Not long out of high school, Chelli is finding her way through awful grief for her best friend, and for her sister, but this documentary loses sight of its subject

Chicago-based Chelli Look, the subject at the centre of this diffuse documentary, seems like a nice person, with a talent for designing and making minimalist leather handbags. Not long out of high school, the best friend with whom she planned to start a business died in a car accident. Then her elder sister, Megan Henneberg, was murdered in 2007 by her husband Brian, leaving Chelli, her parents, siblings and extended family to deal with the harrowing loss.

And yet, no matter how much sympathy you might feel for Chelli and her family’s trauma, or interest you might have in her bagmaking skills, or engagement with her as a person, somehow those core components don’t coalesce to make this feature-length documentary feel vital or even especially necessary. A self-described introvert, Chelli herself is a pretty opaque figure although she speaks quite expressively and intelligently about her approach to design. We only get tiny glimpses of her home life with husband David, so she’s not really developed as a “character” sufficiently to carry the film.

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Stand Up to Racism organiser says counter-protests alone won’t work and advocates leafleting at football grounds

Counter-protesting does not go far enough to fight the growing threat of the far right , and anti-racists must organise concerts and meet the public at football matches, a veteran activist has said.

Ameen Hadi, an organiser for Stand Up to Racism in Manchester who has been involved in the cause for more than four decades, called for a return of gigs such as Rock Against Racism and its successors.

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This prize-winning take on a biblical tale set in 1800s Newfoundland is grim, but has energy, empathy – and a wickedly colourful way with words

Several years have passed since Michael Crummey’s last novel The Innocents was published in the UK in 2020. A pandemic has since occurred and, appropriately perhaps, The Adversary begins on a dark note of contagion. “There was a killing sickness on the shore that winter and the only services at the church were funerals,” runs the opening line, setting the tone for a book that plumbs the depths of depravity but – thanks to its energy, and its ripe and adventurous language – never loses a black sense of humour. Having now won the 30th annual Dublin Literary award, worth €100,000, The Adversary is proof that Crummey is beginning to garner the accolades he deserves beyond his native Canada.

Crummey hails from Newfoundland; all six of his novels are set there. He understands the power of lashing sea, scouring wind, an eked-out existence far from what many consider to be civilisation. In The Innocents he told a kind of Adam-and-Eve story of two children left alone to raise themselves in a shack in the early years of the 19th century. Supplies are occasionally brought in a ship called the Hope; its black-clad captain is known as the Beadle.

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The Hollywood icon played a convent girl falling for a prince in this bizarre film directed by Erich von Stroheim. Decades after it was abandoned, Queen Kelly will now be shown at the Venice film festival

In the long history of Hollywood excess, there is no tale as torrid as that of Queen Kelly. This lavish silent melodrama starring Gloria Swanson and directed by Erich von Stroheim will screen as the pre-opening event at this year’s Venice film festival, with a new score by composer Eli Denson. The film is an outlandish saga of illicit love in sordid surroundings – and so is the story of its production.

Queen Kelly is set in Europe before the first world war and tells the story of Patricia Kelly (Swanson), a convent girl who falls in love with a prince (British actor Walter Byron) who is engaged to a deranged queen. Patricia is sent away to Tanzania, where she is forced into marriage with a vile character called Jan, later earning the nickname Queen Kelly. It’s a far-fetched tale, which sets a curious tone from the beginning with its infamous meet-cute, in which Patricia is so overawed by meeting the prince that her knickers fall to the ground.

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