L.A. Diary: inside the Charles Finch and CHANEL pre-Oscars party
Also: Anora, No Other Land, the women who built brutalism and a Parisian exhibition exploring light and memory
L.A Diary: A dispatch from the Oscars
“I am writing this on Monday morning from the sun-dappled gardens of the Beverly Hills Hotel—there is a quiet feeling in the air at 9am as if the whole city is nursing a collective hangover. Here on Saturday night, our Editor-in-Chief Charles Finch hosted his annual pre-Oscar party with Chanel at the Polo Lounge. He has been doing this for a while, even though he has lost count of the number of times: “20 or 30 or maybe even 40…” he responds, when I ask him to specify.”
Now online, A Rabbit’s Foot Creative Director Fatima Khan reports from Los Angeles on this year’s Academy Awards, accompanied by exclusive images by Max Montgomery.
Read the full story and see all the images from the night
Other stories this week…..
Our Issue 9 cover stars—Sean Baker and Mikey Madison—took home five awards at the Oscars for Anora including best actress for breakout star Madison, and a record-breaking four prizes for Baker. Revisit our interview with the director and actor, and grab an archive copy of our Anora cover issue while stocks still last.
Read our interview with Mikey Madison and Sean Baker
BUY ISSUE 9
The women who built brutalism
Brutalism, an architectural style that is often dismissed as harsh and masculine—as epitomised in Brady Corbet's cinematic epic with the fictional Bauhaus graduate László Toth—in fact contains a rich history shaped by visionary women. Amelia Stevens examines the hidden histories of brutalist women. "In its essence brutalism is an architectural movement deeply concerned with honesty, generosity, and the realities of modern life, of which women have often been the most astute observers," she writes. "Despite a pervasive system of exclusion, subordination, and misattributed authorship intended to keep them anonymous, throughout the 20th and 21st centuries a handful of exemplary female architects, including Lina Bo Bardi, Jadwiga Grabowska-Hawrylak, Renée Gailhoustet, and Svetlana Kana Radević, received recognition for their uniquely beautiful, innovative, and sensitive brutalist works."
No Other Land review – weapons of violence and creation
As No Other Land took home Best Documentary at the Academy Awards, we revisit critic Cici Peng’s 5-star review of the Israeli-Palestinian co-production—which is still awaiting U.S. distribution—from when it first premiered at Berlinale in 2024. “In No Other Land, weapons of destruction and creation coexist. The guns and bulldozers of Israeli soldiers are set against the cameras and phones that document the violence,” she writes. “The documentary emphasises the act of bearing witness as an act of continual resistance and survival—here, the opposite of ‘remember’ is not ‘to forget’, but Israel’s active continual destruction and acts of erasure. As the protagonist’s father emphasises, ‘It’s impossible to forget. How could we forget our land where we are born.’”
With Vita Dopo Vita, memory and art collide in the City of Light
In Paris, the City of Light, the curatorial platform Lux Feminae finds its latest home. Its name, rooted in the Latin for ‘the light of women’, is more than a title; it is a statement of intent. Now in its sixth edition, the curatorial platform returns with the exhibition ‘Vita Dopo Vita’—life after life—at Galerie Derouillon. Curated by Lily Cohen and Olivia Zabludowicz along with Nadia Hejailan Vita Dopo Vita considers what it means for an image to live beyond its moment of creation. “Works by Daniele Toneatti, Ala d’Amico, and Hedi Stanton interrogate the very notion of permanence, unpicking the structures that shape how we see, remember, and reinterpret,” writes Alia Abdulla.
