Cinema | First impressions of ‘Bloody United’

On Stephen Merchant’s BBC 6Music program Dec 30, the actor who inhabited Tony Blair on screen and David Frost on stage said he soon will take on the persona of Brian Clough in the forthcoming film Bloody United. (Dec 30)

Visuals | Round ball, flat art (w/ multimedia)

British Museum database shows football in mix of media

London, Nov 20 | Perusing institutional archives for football-related arcana has been made considerably easier in the Internet age.

A recent example is the quiet launch to the Web of a portion of 50,000 drawings and an even greater number of prints—so-called flat art—within the British Museum collection.

Canada | First among soccer nations

Beckham, on Vancouver swing, tries football by Canadian rules

Vancouver, British Columbia, Nov 7 | As usual, David Beckham’s North American barnstorming circuit—with a stop tonight at BC Place Stadium—to us raises more interest in pre-existing soccer traditions than in the soccer actually being played.

Iran | ‘As if one were under water’

In Iran, Kreuzberg team learns about football under cover

Berlin, Sept 29 | Filmmaker Ayat Najafi had to content himself with experiencing the centerpiece of his new project, Football Under Cover, as an exile.

At Ararat Stadium in Tehran on 28 Apr 06, Najafi stood outside the arena along with husbands of the women inside—players for the Iranian women’s national team, their amateur opponents, BSV Al-Dersimspor of Kreuzberg, and about 1,000 female supporters.

Grown in Galilee | Bnei Sakhnin, by cultivating football, hopes to harvest peace

Sakhnin, Israel, Sept 5 | A small Arab Israeli town of 25,000 residents, nestled in a lower Galilee valley among fig and olive orchards, with an illustrious history and a difficult present, has become world famous within the past three years—all thanks to its soccer team.

A new documentary film, Sons of Sakhnin United, examines Bnei Sakhnin’s place as a bridge builder in divided Israel.

After quest, no ‘Victory’ | Top-5 films do not feature soccer on the Sly

We recently supplied the Atlanta Journal-Constitution with a list of our five favorite soccer movies (“Gimme 5: Films for the Soccer Fan,” Aug 20). We limited ourselves to feature films available via DVD and to those we had actually seen, resisting the urge to include Le Ballon d’Or (The Golden Ball; France/Guinea, 1994) based on reputation alone.

File under ‘aesthetics’ | 5 epiphanic goals from Marta Vieira da Silva

Rio de Janeiro, Jul 25 | Normally we do not post goal videos, but that these are goals by a woman—albeit one of the world’s best-known players, Marta Vieira da Silva of Brazil—and that they were scored at a “lesser” football competition, the 15th Pan American Games, means that otherwise they will rapidly fade into obscurity, as if they had never happened.

Souls on ‘The Line’ | Guatemala City sex workers turn to fútbol for a sense of who they are

Guatemala City, Guatemala, Jun 30 | Of football documentaries that favor the human element there is no shortage of late.

One of the most recent is Estrellas de la Lí­nea, screened at English-language film festivals as The Railroad All-Stars, about Guatemala City sex workers who in 2004 organized themselves as a football team.

‘Wild boys’ and soccer school | The sixth photo-contest winner

The winner of the quarterly photo contest is posted.

Offside trap | Iranian women, in Panahi’s film, move beyond a boundary

Tehran, Iran, Mar 28 | The women in “Offside”—Jafar Panahi’s 2006 production now receiving limited release in American cinemas—have “entered a forbidden space before the law has given them permission to do so,” says the Iranian director.

“They don’t have that permission yet, but they’ve gone ahead and entered the territory anyway. They’ve overturned the rules.”

A portrait with fluidity | Preserving Zidane’s day of work on ‘the green of the field’

For art-house and football film buffs in the United States, viewings of the 2006 Cannes Film Festival entry “Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait” likely will be a private or slightly illicit affair.

Women who matter | West Midlands photographer offers clearer picture of grassroots game

Birmingham, England, Feb 14 | When Jaskirt Dhaliwal trained the lens of her Mamiya 7 II on players of Birmingham City Ladies FC, she told them not to smile. Instead, the players were asked to think about their lives in football and all that such a life entails.