Parky at the Pictures (In Cinemas 4/5/2017)

Having taken over his father's metal workshop, Toshio (Kanji Furutachi) has become increasingly detached from wife Akie (Mariko Tsutsui) and their 10 year-old daughter, Hotaru (Momone Shinokawa). She practices to a metronome on a harmonium in the house adjoining the business and says grace with her mother before a breakfast exchange about a type of spider that allows its young to devour it. Reading the paper, Toshio joins in with neither the prayer or the conversation. He proves more talkative, however, when old friend Yasaka (Tadanobu Asano) turns up on the doorstep after spending 11 years in prison. Without consulting Akie, Toshio offers Asano a job and lodgings for three weeks, while he gets his life in order. But he refuses to answer any of his wife's questions about the stranger living in her home.

Indeed, he remains reticent when Yasaka returns with his belongings at suppertime, although Toshio does ask Hotaru whether the baby spiders would go to Hell for eating their mother. Akie feels uncomfortable when Yasaka wanders into the living-room in his underwear after taking a bath and asks him to leave so Hotaru can continue her harmonium practice. But she is taken by his interest in the dress she is making her daughter for her first public performance and wishes him goodnight after he wakes from a nightmare because he cannot sleep in the dark.

The next morning, Yasaka eats his breakfast quickly and noisily and insists on washing his dishes. While out walking in his pristine white overalls, he sees Hotaru skipping her harmonium lesson and offers to teach her himself. Akie is surprised that he plays so well, but gets to know him a little better while walking home from the post office through their semi-industrial riverside neighbourhood. Yasaka asks if she is a Protestant and jokes that she is like a kitten who allows herself to be carried along by the scruff of the neck. But she takes the remark in good part, as she does a crude comment about how well he knows her husband.

The old pals share a cigarette on the terrace before Yasaka gives Hotaru another lesson. He also accompanies Akie to church, even though he doesn't believe in God. But he proves to know all about sin when he confides in a tea shop that he killed a man and spent his sentence wondering why the victim's mother had slapped her cheeks in court when the verdict was delivered and what she must have endured in losing a son and seeing his killer escape the death penalty. That night, she asks Toshio why he withheld the truth and warns him not to underestimate her. She also asks Yasaka if she can sew in his room while Hotaru practices and he lets her read the letter he is writing to the dead man's family. Akie is touched and invites Yasaka on a weekend outing and he accepts with a bashful smile.

Arriving at an idyllic riverside spot, Toshio and Yasaka go fishing while Akie and Hotaru clamber up a rock. The men chase after a hat when it falls into the water and Yasaka unnerves Toshio when he promises not to mention the fact that he was an eyewitness to the killing and left his friend to take the rap alone. Father and daughter doze off on a rug and Akie beckons Yasaka to lie beside them for a family photo. They go for a stroll and he shows her a scarlet hibiscus flower that blooms and dies in a single day. He imitates a crow cawing in the tree and she laughs before he kisses her and they hold on to each other more out of a need for human contact than any romantic desire.

They kiss again after she finishes Hotaru's red dress, but Akie stops Yasaka from going any further when she hears Toshio opening the workshop grille. As a consequence, Yasaka eats his lunch alone. But the sound of a couple copulating on the riverbank stirs his passion and, having passed Toshio on the road home, he unzips his overall to reveal a red t-shirt underneath. Singing the words to the song Hotaru has been playing (about good times disappearing forever), he forces himself upon Akie and pushes her down on the kitchen table. But she struggles and he crashes into a cupboard on falling to the floor.

Rushing outside to regain his composure, Yasaka sees Hotaru in her new dress, skating along on her pink roller trainers. As dusk begins to fall, Toshio wakes Akie from a nap and asks after their daughter. When he goes in search of her, he finds her in the playground with Yasaka standing over her as she bleeds from a head wound. His distressed cries bring Akie running, but he refuses to listen as Yasaka tries to explain and is baffled when he suddenly vanishes into the warren of side streets.

Eight years pass and Akie has developed a hand-washing compulsion, while Toshio has hired a detective to search for the missing Yasaka. He has also taken on a new apprentice, Takashi (Taiga), to replace the departing Shintara (Takahiro Miura). He gets to meet Hotaru (Kana Mahiro), who is now brain-damaged and confined to a wheelchair, with her left arm curled up to her cheek. The guilt-ridden Akie lets no one else touch her. But, when Takashi buys her daughter a pair of earrings, she allows him to draw her. She also urges Toshio to stop searching for Yasaka, as the detective fees are costing them a fortune. However, he is determined to find out what happened in the playground and insists that it's too soon to give up.

One day, as they work, Takashi casually reveals to Toshio that Yasaka is his father. He explains that he has never met him, as Yasaka didn't marry his mother. But Takashi found his letters after she died and applied on the off chance for a job after seeing photographs of the trip to the river. Toshio orders Takashi to say nothing to Akie and slaps him across the face before rushing after his wife, who has taken Hotaru for some fresh air. He decides to keep the secret, however, and returns to the workshop as Akie cradles Hotaru to protect her from the rush of an oncoming truck.

Akie wears herself out tending to Hotaru and she is glad to sit and watch Takashi paint her. She leaps up, however, when he drops a brush on the floor and he jokes that his mother also had a phobia about dirt. She asks about his family and Takashi describes how he used to look after his mother when she became bedridden and kept asking him to help her die. Realising he might seem insensitive, he breaks off. But Akie is intrigued by his story and encourages him to go on. However, Hotaru needs attention and Takashi withdraws, only for Akie to knock his jacket off the top of the bookshelf and she sees the photographs he keeps in his pocket. She asks how he knows Yasaka and Takashi admits that he knows little about him other than the fact he was a yakuza.

He also lets slip that Yasaka was in prison for murder when he was born and never squealed on his accomplice. Akie is aghast at hearing this and rushes into the kitchen to phone her husband. She starts to wash her hands, but sees Takashi leaning over Hotaru on the close-circuit monitor and orders him out of the room. In fleeing, he dashes past Toshio, who is unable to rouse him when he calls at his digs. Several days go by and Akie imagines she sees Yasaka emerge from behind the sheets she has hung out to dry on the upstairs balcony. They float down to the street and Toshio collects them. He asks Akie if she is okay and, when she asks what he knows about Yasaka's crime, he confesses that he held the victim down as he was strangled. Akie covers her face, as Toshio wonders whether Hotaru's condition is his punishment for abandoning Yasaka and Akie's for sleeping with him. She slaps herself hard across the cheek and asks Toshio for a divorce in lambasting him for daring to suggest that their daughter's misfortune atones for anything.

Feeling ashamed, Toshio tells the detective to drop the case, even though his new investigator has taken pictures of a man who closely resembles Yasaka. But, when he calls Akie, she comes running back from a walk around the block and she insists on Takashi coming with them when they drive to the place where Yasaka has been spotted. He occupies the front seat beside Toshio, while Akie sits in the back with Hotaru. She tells him that they have invited him along so that Yasaka can watch them kill him and Toshio says he will do whatever it takes to make Akie feel better. They drive to a mountain village and Akie hears someone playing Hotaru's song on a tinny piano. But, when they gather outside the window, it quickly becomes apparent that the father teaching his daughter to play is not Yasaka.

As they drive home, Akie drops off to sleep and dreams that a healthy Hotaru comes to sit beside her on a bench in the playground. Suddenly, there are on a beach with the tide lapping against their shoes. So, when Toshio and Takashi stop for drinks, Akie takes Hotaru to a high bridge over a river and jumps off after imagining she receives an encouraging smile from a red-shirted Yasaka. Toshio dives in to rescue his wife and thinks he sees Hotaru make a miraculous recovery and swim to the surface. But, as he struggles to the bank with Akie, he realises that Hotaru and Takashi are dead. He slaps Akie back to consciousness before lying beside her on the bank in a tragically grotesque recreation of the snapshot with Yasaka. Determined not to give up, he tries to resuscitate his child, as the screen fades to black to the devastating strain of the harmonium melody.

Many will be reminded of Kiyoshi Kurosawa's Creepy while watching this arresting and affecting drama. While Tadanabu Asano's interloper is nowhere near as maniacally dangerous as Teruyuki Kagawa's next-door neighbour from Hell, he has a similar effect on a disaffected couple whose outwardly contented petite-bourgeois union is little more than a sham. Indeed, Kanji Furutachi and Mariko Tsutsui don't even have their daughter in common, as they drift through an existence that's as soulless as their environs. But, just as Yuko Takeuchi fell under Kagawa's spell, so the lonely Tsutsui is drawn to Asano, whose feelings remain as shrouded as his motives for running away. Is he seeking revenge by seducing Furutachi's wife and harming his daughter or has he simply drifted back to his old stomping ground and been swept away by a series of unfortunate events?

This tendency towards melodramatic contrivance takes the picture out of the realms of pure shomin-geki and into the outer reaches of the thriller. But there's something Sirkian or Fassbenderian about the way in which events conspire against principals, who are as much victims of societal forces as fate and their own flaws. Fukada has been here before in Hospitalité, a bleak comedy he has described as a dry run for this flipside of the same coin (interestingly, Furutachi played the intruder). But, while warning about the comfort of strangers at a time of alienation and solitude, he also ponders why Japanese people are finding it increasingly difficult to find friends, let alone life partners. He is ably abetted by a fine cast, who underplay to such a disarming effect that the twists in the storyline seem all the more unsettling. Kenichi Negishi's camerawork is equally restrained, as it uses natural light and shade to pick up the details dotted around Kensuke Suzuki's sombre interiors, at the centre of which is the dark wooden harmonium that provides Hiroyuki Onogawa's jauntily disturbing score.

Given that Martin McGuinness only died six weeks ago, it's safe to say that The Journey has been released with indecent haste. Directed by Nick Hamm and written by Colin Bateman, this has much in common with Stephen Frears's The Deal (2003), in which Peter Morgan speculated on what Tony Blair (Michael Sheen) and Gordon Brown (David Morrissey) might have said to each other while plotting the future of the Labour Party in the Granita restaurant in Islington in 1994. But, while that encounter actually took place (several sources suggest that Eileen Paisley was at her husband's side during the talks) and the events that precipitated it leant themselves to a little satirical wit, the same can't be said for the Troubles in Northern Ireland. Consequently, this fictionalised bromantic account of what transpired in the hours before the signing of the St Andrews Agreement in October 2006 feels as crassly ill-judged as Richard Tanne's Southside With You (2016), which chronicled Barack and Michelle Obama's first date.

As the rain pours down and closes Glasgow Airport, Dr Ian Paisley (Timothy Spall) is concerned that he will not be able to keep a promise and fly home to Belfast to celebrate his 50th wedding anniversary. Determined to keep the leader of the Democratic Unionist Party sweet, British Prime Minister Tony Blair (Toby Stephens) and Irish Taoiseach Bertie Ahern (Mark Lambert) make arrangements for him to fly out of Edinburgh. Eager to avoid offending the Sinn Féin delegation led by Gerry Adams (Ian Beattie) and Martin McGuinness (Colm Meaney), Blair and Ahern keep them abreast of their plans. However, as protocol dictates that Northern Irish politicians travel with their opposite numbers to reduce the risk of a terrorist attack, McGuinness insists on taking the plane. Even though he has never personally met a man who considers him the devil incarnate, McGuinness is convinced there might never be a better time to get the 81 year-old Free Presbyterian minister alone so they can discuss the situation like civilised men.

Adams and adviser Rory McBride (Ian McElhinney) are far from convinced, with the latter urging McGuinness to honour his IRA past by not claiming that a deal that makes Republicans subservient in a power-sharing scheme is a victory. But Ian Paisley, Jr. (Barry Ward) is no more open to the idea and his father claims the arrangement is no skin off his nose, as MI5 boss Harry Patterson (John Hurt) and aide Kate Elgar (Catherine McCormack) watch Scottish chauffeur Jack (Freddie Highmore) steer his people carrier away from the heavily guarded Fairmont Hotel.

Breaking with convention, Jack asks his passengers why the recognises them and McGuinness (who shares the driver's interest in cricket) makes the introductions. But Patterson speaks to Jack through an earpiece (there is also a windshield camera beaming pictures back to an operations room) and encourages him to get Paisley and McGuinness talking as `they are the Troubles' and the deal is doomed unless they can find some common ground as human beings. Fortunately, McGuinness is thinking along the same lines and he tries to get Paisley to engage with him by discussing alcohol and line-dancing. But the DUP leader has no intention of letting his detested foe break the ice.

Jack mentions having once driven Samuel L. Jackson, but Paisley has no idea who he is (although he does recall that US President Andrew Jackson was a good Presbyterian). McGuinness mentions a few of his films, but Paisley growls that he has not been to the cinema since 1973, when he led a peaceful protest against a sinful movie. Amused, McGuinness tries to guess what might have upset him and ventures The Sting and Enter the Dragon before remembering The Exorcist. But Paisley shuts him up by accusing him of leading a bombing campaign, while he was trying to save souls.

When Paisley gets a call from his wife, McGuinness asks if he can borrow the phone, as he can't get a signal. But Paisley refuses and they get into a row when McGuinness blasphemes. Yet, just as he is about to compare the mobile to the DUP's attitude to Northern Ireland, he thinks better of it and hopes that the party is a success. He asks Paisley how he met his wife and he recalls her standing outside her father's grocery shop listening to him preach on some wasteland near the shipyard that built the Titanic. She had smiled at one of his jokes and he had ventured into the shop and made her laugh again while she was up a ladder. McGuinness teases him about being stand-up comedian and tries to imagine a time when Paisley was shy and quiet.

Swapping seats to face his adversary, McGuinness asks if he genuinely believes that priests and nuns were handing out guns and that the European Union is part of a papist conspiracy. When Paisley nods, McGuinness wonders if he really believes the Pope is the Antichrist and whether seat 666 in the European Parliament has been reserved for Satan. He demands to know why he peddles such tosh to followers who take his word as gospel and questions whether he has a duty to lead with more integrity.

As his passengers stare out of the window, Jack listens to Patterson musing on their poisonous hatred. But he still believes that they are the best way to bring about peace because they no longer have the stomach for violence and are desperate to prevent the younger generation seizing the reins and striving to bring 9/11-scale terror to Ulster. Patterson also alerts Jack to the need to buy time and he calls off the trailing security car and orders the chauffeur to take a detour through a country park to give Paisley and McGuinness more time to bond.

When McGuinness asks what's going on, Paisley taunts him about his need for the Queen's protection. But they are both shaken when Jack skids and punctures a tyre by crashing into a pile of logs. He claims to have swerved to avoid a deer and invites Paisley and McGuinness to step outside while he makes the necessary repairs. But they are not entirely convinced, as they are alone after taking a detour that no one else appears to be following. Patterson is furious with Jack, who is embarrassed when Paisley questions his methods for changing the wheel. But Patterson gets a rollocking of his own from Blair for dispensing with the security corps and stranding the two key players in the negotiations in the middle of nowhere.

As Blair tries to reassure Ahern and Adams that everything is under control, Paisley and McGuinness go for a stroll and bicker over the difference between a terrorist and a freedom fighter. But they trade insults after McGuinness blames the rise in Republican volunteers on Bloody Sunday, when 13 people were gunned down in Derry on 30 January 1972. Paisley denies having blood on his hands because he has only ever preached the Word of God. But, while he vehemently denies he is anything like McGuinness, they are both spooked by noises in the trees and, suddenly, they both remember they are vulnerable human beings who are not getting any younger and need to establish their legacy before it's too late. Moreover, when they find a dying deer in a clearing, Paisley gets a new insight into McGuinness when he doesn't have the heart to put it out of its misery.

They wander into an abandoned church and Paisley explains how the stained glass is based on stories from Foxe's Book of Martyrs. But McGuinness insists that there were martyrs on his side, too, and, when Paisley accuses him of letting Bobby Sands and his fellow hunger strikers die to score a publicity coup, McGuinness declares that there would be no peace process without them. As Blair tries to keep Paisley, Jr. and Adams calm at the hotel, Paisley climbs into the pulpit and McGuinness asks him for a bit of his `Never! Never! Never!' speech. But Paisley refuses and wonders why he is even contemplating betraying the people who have always trusted him. McGuinness smiles when he uses the word `we' for the first time, but Paisley immediately goes back on the defensive.

In the churchyard, McGuinness admits being moved by seeing Gordon Wilson on the news forgiving the IRA for the Remembrance Day bomb at Enniskillen on 8 November 1987. He admits it was a mistake and came to realise that the war had to stop when he couldn't justify the death of 12 people to his young daughter. But Paisley accuses him of shedding crocodile tears and McGuinness retorts that his counterpart is a big-headed bigot who exploits his supporters to further his own ends. Jack looks down in despair from the road and fears he is on a fool's errand. Yet, as he climbs back into the vehicle, Paisley suggests the time might have arrived for them to start doing things differently.

While Blair and the others watch the CCTV link, Jack pulls in for petrol, as darkness falls. Paisley and McGuinness go to the washroom and, as the former looks into a broken mirror, the latter asks how the title `First Minister' sounds. They emerge to find the garage attendant refusing to take Jack's bent credit card. So, Paisley relates the story of Christ driving the moneylenders from the Temple at full volume and the young man keys in the number by hand. Turning with a half-wink, Paisley goes to wait outside, while Jack fills the tank. He asks McGuinness if he ever killed anyone and he replies that every war has its casualties. Paisley snorts in derision, but McGuinness accuses him of starting the Troubles by refusing to back the Civil Rights campaign in the 1960s. He protests that he would have been as willing to die for the cause of Catholic equality as Martin Luther King had been for African-American rights. But he still brands Nelson Mandela a terrorist and is forced to double-take when McGuinness suggests that he could be as revered as Mandela if he took the giant step towards peace.

As Paisley gets back into the vehicle, wondering if he could lead his constituency to back the deal, McGuinness spots the gun in Jack's belt and grabs it and forces him up against the door. He calms down when Jack explains his mission, but is distracted by Paisley keeling over in his seat. Rushing to his side, he finds some pills in his pocket and jokes that he would be lynched if Paisley died in his company. The older man pats his hand and reassures him that he will be fine. But he insists on pressing on to the airport and they get the giggles imagining famous speeches with a Northern Irish `so it is' tagged on to the end of them. But, as they get closer to the airport, Paisley asks Jack to pull over.

They park in a quayside filled with small boats. Paisley asks McGuinness why they never tried to assassinate him and wonders if God has brought him to this spot for a purpose - or if McGuinness is the Devil tempting him down from the moral high ground with power. McGuinness reminds him that the Marian martyrs fought against the grain for a better future and urges Paisley to take the same leap of faith. But they travel the remaining miles in silence, until Jack leaves them alone in the hangar. Paisley agrees the change has to come. But he insists McGuinness apologises for the war crimes his side has committed. Yet, while he knows he could make the empty gesture in private, he has too much loyalty to his people to betray them in such a cheap way and Paisley smiles, commends him for giving a true politician's answer and extends his hand.

The onlookers at the golf resort breathe a collective sigh of relief, as Paisley and McGuinness sip tea on the plane. A caption records that they entered into shared devolved power on 8 May 2007 and forged such an unexpectedly strong partnership that they became known as `the Chuckle Brothers'. But events move much more quickly than film-makers might wish and the peace Hamm and Bateman celebrate is on much shakier ground than it was when their picture wrapped.

For much of the time, this is an excruciating watch, with the segments back at the hotel being particularly crass. In one of his last roles, John Hurt has to deliver an execrable speech about Paisley and McGuinnness being the incarnation of anarchy, while Toby Stephens insultingly plays Tony Blair like a buffoon in a Rory Bremner sketch. Intriguingly, no such mockery is directed at Bertie Ahern, Gerry Adams or Ian Paisley, Jr. But Blair is such a soft target these days and the decision to depict him in this manner ruinously undermines an already specious project.

Yet Colm Meaney and Timothy Spall are splendidly persuasive as the implacable enemies seeing sense and agreeing to take a risk together. Essaying a mischievous schemer, the former opts for a less obvious impersonation than the latter, who occasionally lets the stentorian gravitas slip to bear his tombstone teeth in a wheezing chortle. But they cannily convey how a working relationship might have evolved. But, while Bateman deserves credit for concocting such a ripping yarn and for reminding Northern Ireland's current leaders about the perils of intransigence, he never addresses the core issues in any depth and his script too often relies on reworking The Odd Couple scenario - which, of course, makes it all the more unconvincing and curiously compelling.

A power struggle of a very different kind dominates Matt Tyrnauer's documentary, Citizen Jane: Battle for the City. Much grittier than his debut outing, Valentino: The Last Emperor (2008), this astute blend of archive footage and talking-head interview recalls the clash between construction tycoon Robert Moses and Jane Jacobs, a journalist-cum-anthropologist who felt compelled to become an activist in the late 1950s in order to oppose plans to redevelop various parts of New York as a concrete jungle. With Vincent D'Onofrio and Marisa Tomei providing the voices of the antagonists, this fascinating study draws heavily on Jacobs's 1961 tome, The Death and Life of Great American Cities. But the influence of Robert Caro’s Pulitzer Prize-winning biography, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York (1974), Peter Laurence's Becoming Jane Jacobs, Alice Sparberg Alexiou's Jane Jacobs: Urban Visionary and Anthony Flint's Wrestling With Moses: How Jane Jacobs Took on New York's Master Builder and Transformed the American City also seems evident.

Tyrnauer opens with Jacobs's celebrated quote - `Cities have the capability of providing something for everybody, only because, and only when, they are created by everybody.' - before setting the scene by revealing the unprecedented amount of urbanisation currently taking place across the globe. His assembled experts indicate that this is a crucial time for the future of human civilisation and suggest that many important lessons can be learned from the way that Jacobs resisted Moses's bid to clear what he considered to be slum areas and replace them with gleaming edifices of concrete, steel and glass that would revolutionise the concept and practice of urban dwelling.

Theoretical physicist Geoffrey West and urban theorists James Howard Kunstler and Max Page join with architecture critic Paul Goldberger and urban planner Alexander Garvin in explaining the social chasm represented by the magisterial skyscrapers and crumbling tenements that defined New York for the first part of the 20th century. Emerging from the Progressive Movement, Moses had originally striven to alleviate some of the miseries of urban poverty by creating parks and beaches. But he also became convinced that the slums incubated disease and discontent and he vowed to replace them with high-rise structures modelled on the modernist masterpieces of the Swiss-French architect, Le Corbusier.

This, however, brought him into conflict with Jacobs. Friend Mary Rowe recalls how she adored New York and fed off the energy of its bustle and diversity. She lived in Greenwich Village and confides to an interviewer how the city gave everyone a chance to do something interesting and new from the humblest of origins. But, as author Steven Johnson notes, the postwar planners wanted to sweep away the stoops and sidewalks where the poorer people congregated and information films of the period reveal how the dream of urban renewal was sold to an unsuspecting populace that still trusted government to do the right and best thing. Research psychiatrist Mindy Fullilove and urban theorist Thomas J. Campanella declare that the planners wished to remove the cancer that was blighting the city and felt that applying the logic of the machine age would enable them to play God with the citizens.

As New York's parks commissioner, construction co-ordinator and head of a mayoral committee on slum clearance, Moses acquired the power to sign relocation and demolition orders and initiate building projects. However, he soon made enemies and architect Michael Sorkin regrets that he lost sight of his earlier utilitarian vision. Jacobs was the first to dare oppose the renewal tsar and she soon became a familiar face on television denouncing the `sacking of cities' in the name of progress and deriding the `marvels of dullness and regimentation' that had replaced the tenements where communities had once thrived. Architect Toni Griffin states that Jacobs understood how urban living worked and how small streets with lots of diversity was the key to ensuring interaction and integration.

Biographer Peter Laurence reveals that Jacobs began writing about the city when she was 18 years old and journalist Anthony Flint extols her drive to freelance while working as a secretary at a candy company. She placed many pieces with Vogue and started profiling New York's trade and residential centres. A recurring theme was the need to shape the city around people and not impose buildings and lifestyles upon them, although biographer Alice Sparberg Alexiou recalls that she also published an item on manhole covers (Jeremy Corbyn take note) before landing a staff job on the influential journal, Architectural Forum.

This post took her to Philadelphia in 1954, where she locked horns with Edmund Bacon, the executive director of the city's planning committee. Initially, she had applauded the ideas to regenerate Society Hill by restoring old properties alongside new ones. But she took exception to the council blaming the residents for failing to create flourishing communities in buildings that failed to meet their needs. Friend Roberta Gratz remembers how she similarly criticised developments in East Harlem. But, more importantly, she saw here how ethnically diverse groupings supported and supplemented each other and the mutuality of these systems of order became the keystone of her vision of urbanism.

The personality of neighbourhoods come from the bottom up, as residents spontaneously find ways to rub along. Economist Sanford Ikeda says Jacobs understood that living cities were dense and messy and worked because of an organised complexity that would cease to be wholly effective if it was understood too well. But renewalists like Moses failed to appreciate the significance of this ground-level vitality and, convinced by their ill-considered utopian fantasies, they sent in the bulldozers.

Although Le Corbusier had been inspired by a flight over Paris, the City of Light rejected his proposals for cruciform tower blocks and super highways. But they influenced the Futurama exhibit at the 1939 World's Fair in New York and convinced many that rebuilding to accommodate cars and steepling housing estates would make Americas cities more efficient and harmonious. But Jacobs's editor Jason Epstein and architects Robert A.M. Stern and Geeta Mehta point out that the planners misinterpreted Le Corbusier's intention of surrounding high-rise offices with seven-storey residential blocks and plumped for a corrupted variation that made greater commercial sense. But, as Goldberger notes, Jacobs realised that living in the air took people off the pavements and, thus, prevented them from interacting and sharing the experience of the neighbourhood vibe. They also ceased to police their own streets and turned the open spaces into dangerous no-go zones.

But Moses was too egotistical to listen to such logic and dismissed constructive criticism as a form of NIMBYism. He drew plaudits for successes like the Lincoln Centre, but they merely emboldened him to make ruinous mid-50s proposals like extending Fifth Avenue through Washington Square Park. Future mayor Ed Koch stood alongside Jacobs, Shirley Hayes and Edith Lyons in their bid to save the park where their kids played and the community came together for social and cultural events. Rowe and friend Carol Greitzer recall how the force of her personality enabled Jacobs to enlist such supporters as Eleanor Roosevelt, Margaret Mead and Susan Sontag in exposing the hectoring tactics of Moses and his cronies, who were determined to sweep away the speakeasies and jazz clubs that they deemed dens of iniquity. But his biggest mistake lay in branding Jacobs a `housewife' and questioning why a bunch of mothers had a right to stand selfishly in the way of vital change.

Coming so soon after his defeat in Washington Square, Moses had no time for The Death and Life of Great American Cities, which he considered libellous. But the book was spurned by another of Moses's most vociferous adversaries, Lewis Mumford of The New Yorker, who ticked off Jacobs for suggesting `home remedies' when serious surgery was required. But she had no time for bandying barbs, as her own West Village neighbourhood had been earmarked for renewal. No one hazards whether this was Moses taking revenge, but Jacobs launched a campaign to win over Mayor Robert F. Wagner and he reversed the ruling that this was a slum area in need of demolition. But Flint and others agree that Jacobs was an articulate voice and resourceful pragmatist who borrowed tactics from the Civil Rights, feminist and green movements.

Yet, while President Lyndon Johnson called for all Americans to have a decent home, the projects that sprang up across the country concentrated poverty and social problems in out-of-the-way ghettos that quickly fell into disrepair and saw rates of crime, vandalism and drug use rise dramatically. Griffin, Mehta and Fullilove echo the contemporary claims of James Baldwin that this was part of a concerted bid to remove working-class blacks from city centres and architect Charles Correa says it came as no surprise when planners blew up the infamous Pruitt-Igoe estate in St Louis because there rejection of soulless blocks had been rejected so completely. A montage follows of other estates buckling and collapsing and there is something innately sad about seeing them fall. But one can only applaud the failure of the crypto-fascist spirit that inspired their construction.

Another aspect of modern life that was changing the US landscape was the rise of the motor car. Urban theorist Mike Davis highlights the consequences of Moses's commandment, `Thou Shalt Drive,' One of his most controversial projects was the Cross Bronx Expressway, which Jacobs opposed because she believed it was pavements that made communities not roads. Architect Donald Shiffmann denounces the route for tearing the heart out of the borough and Davis agrees it contributed massively to the social problems in the South Bronx. But Moses had no sympathy for those who were displaced and mocked the efforts of Jacobs to thwart him. The network of looping links took 17 years to complete, but it became gridlocked almost immediately and few mourned when the Lower Manhattan Expressway proposal fell through.

Moses argued his case in the 1964 short, This Urgent Need. But local priest Fr LaMountain was determined to preserve the 19th-century buildings in the SoHo district that had acquired the nickname Hell's Hundred Acres and Jacobs rallied to his call. She organised protests in Little Italy and friend Jane Goldin recalls how she called Moses out for accusing the residents of strangling the city to hang on to their rented slums. She also discovered he was trying to smuggle the legislation through City Hall and protested at a public hearing. When a stenographer panicked thinking a riot was about to break out, she dropped her tapes and Jacobs supporters picked them up and nullified the meeting because its minutes had been lost.

She was arrested and charged with three felonies for her actions, but she won the day and Moses realised politicians could no longer be bribed or bullied into doing his bidding. He was ousted by Governor Nelson Rockefeller and Jacobs followed her architect husband to Toronto, where he was building hospitals and their sons were escaping the Vietnam draft. Ironically, she had to fight another highway proposal in Canada, but she was largely left to write. But the urban sprawl situation remained unchecked and spread around the world. Political economist Saskia Sassen compares modern China to being like `Moses on steroids' and Mehta proclaims these new high-rise estates the slums of the future. They agree with Jacobs that such dormitory blocks don't constitute a real city and can never become so without an attendant public realm of shops and facilities.

Owing much to Godfrey Reggio and Ron Fricke, the closing montage of teeming street scenes seems overly stylised and trite. Moreover, it distracts from the closing snippet of Jacobs wisdom: `Under the seeming disorder of the old city, wherever the old city is working successfully, is a marvellous order for maintaining the safety of the streets and the freedom of the city. It is a complex order. Its essence is intricacy of sidewalk use, bringing with it a constant succession of eyes. This order is all composed of movement and change, and although it is life, not art, we may fancifully call it the art form of the city and liken it to the dance - not to a simple-minded precision dance with everyone kicking up at the same time, twirling in unison and bowing off en masse, but to an intricate ballet in which the individual dancers and ensembles all have distinctive parts which miraculously reinforce each other and compose an orderly whole.'

The poetic nature of this prose testifies to Jacobs's achievement as a writer. But it's her rabble-rousing and refusal to kow-tow to a tyrant that makes this such a rivetting watch. She went on to write eight more books before dying at the age of 89 in 2006. But, even though he sometimes makes Moses seem like a pantomime villain (when, in fact, he was an intellectual who descended into megalomania after being corrupted by power) Tyrnauer is right to play down suggestions that her activities form a blueprint for countering Trumpism in the United States. However, he might have made more of the machine behind Moses and explored his policies in the wider context of the Eisenhowerian ethos. Nevertheless, he conveys the scale and significance of the struggle with some superb archive material, which has been cogently assembled by editor David B. Thompson.

Arriving in cinemas to coincide with the announcement of this year's Turner Prize nominees, Timothy Marrinan and Richard Dewey's Burden chronicles the career of a `danger artist' who achieved notoriety in 1971 when he was shot in the arm during a misfiring gallery stunt. Chris Burden died of melanoma at the age of 69 on 10 May 2015 and Marrinan and Dewey were fortunate enough to secure one of his last interviews at his retreat in Topanga Canyon. But, while they provide an intriguing introduction to the `Evel Knievel of the art world', they fail satisfactorily to explain his switch from critic-baiting performance pieces to mischievously monumental sculptures that bore out his contention that art should ask questions without necessarily having a purpose.

Frustrated by his experiences as a junior architect, Burden decided to become a sculptor at a time when many considered such a course to be artistic suicide. He enrolled on the new art course at University of California, Irvine and fellow student Nancy Buchanan recalls the very basic facilities. But Burden found a way to turn them to his advantage when he squeezed himself inside Locker 5 in Room 167 and artist Ed Moses recalls how `Five Day Locker Piece' made people sit up and take notice, even though the door was locked and he could only communicate through a grille. Some of this conversations were recorded and classmate Charles Hill and tutor Larry Bell smile on recalling what was tantamount to a magician's trick.

Artist Billy Al Bengston admits to thinking it was a stupid stunt and a montage shows pieces like `Movie On the Way Down' (which he filmed suspended upside down and naked from the ceiling), `You'll Never See My Face in Kansas City' (which saw him wearing a balaclava), and `I Became a Secret Hippie' (which involved having his head shaved and putting on an FBI-style suit). Former tutor Robert Irwin claims they were like a slap in the face of the art establishment, but Burden was striving to show that `sculpture was action', as viewers had to walk around a three-dimensional piece rather than stand face-on to a painting. But his desire to involve the audience could seem a little eccentric, such as the time he disappeared for a few days without telling anyone and made people noticing or not registering his absence part of the experience.

In `Shout Piece' (1971), he sat on a platform above the gallery floor and used loudhailers to order visitors to get out. Colleagues Bruce Dunlap and Barbara Smith concede that his ideas made them rethink their own approach to the plastic arts and they joined with him in funding the F-Space Gallery where they could do whatever appealed to them. But critic Brian Sewell has no time for such performance nonsense and curses the silly people who give it credibility. Burden, however, insists that he was trying to regain control of the inflated art market by making pieces like `Prelude to 220 or 110' that could not be sold. This required him to be bolted with copper bands to the concrete gallery floor near two rubber buckets of water in which live 110-volt cables had been immersed. The point was that the situation was `energised' because Burden could have been electrocuted had anybody spilt the water. New Yorker critic Peter Schjeldahl questions the sado-masochistic nature of a piece that could just as easily have been mounted at a sinister science fair.

Burden next pondered the notion that being shot is as American as apple pie and asked Dunlap to fire a rifle to graze his left arm. But `Shoot' (1971) became more of a talking point because the bullet went into the arm instead, although what seems most notable from the grainy monochrome footage is that Burden remained silent and made no fuss about being wounded. But he didn't enjoy being questioned by the police about the incident and admits in his workshop in California's Topanga Canyon that he rarely thinks about his early work any longer.

At the time, he was married to Barbara Burden, who filmed `Icarus' (1973), which saw him lying naked on the floor underneath glass sheets coated in petrol. She supported him, as he spent hours smoking dope and planning items like `Jaizu' (1974), which Barbara Smith recalls was a meditative piece that involved Burden sitting in a chair across the gallery from an open box containing some joints. The visitor could sit on the cushions provided and either observe or smoke (Smith took the latter option and recalls seeing two sides of Burden's character as he sat motionless behind a pair of sunglasses). If this anticipated some of Marina Abramovich's work and the odd David Blaine stunt, `Bed Piece' (1972) borrowed blatantly from Yoko Ono and John Lennon, as Burden slept in the gallery.

Some have suggested Burden's work was influenced by the tensions between his engineer father and biologist mother. But, while sister Leslie opines that they were raised to be anti-social misanthropes (despite living comfortably and being schooled in Switzerland) and artist Bob Wilhite tells a story about the young Burden throwing something through a TV set, collector Stanley Grinstein recalls seeing little of such privilege in Burden's demeanour. Ironically, in the mid-1970s, Burden used television to transmit such attention-grabbing items as `Poem for LA' (in which he repeatedly intoned `Science has failed. Heat is Life. Time kills') and `Chris Burden Promo', in which he added his own name to a list of great artists that comprised Leonardo Da Vinci, Michelangelo, Rembrandt, Vincent Van Gogh and Pablo Picasso.

But he was back in the gallery for `Match Piece' (1972), which saw him fire foil tipped matchstick rockets at his wife's naked torso. She recalls that they burnt her skin, but she didn't have the heart to nail his hands to the roof of a Volkswagen Beetle for the Crucifixion parody, `Trans-Fixed' (1974). Artist Alexis Smith agrees that he had a high pain threshold, but hints that he always made things look more dangerous than they were to ensure a myth became attached to a transient piece so that it could not easily be forgotten.

Everything he did during this period was filmed and/or photographed and it amused Burden that his oeuvre could be kept in a filing cabinet. But he started producing much larger and more involved pieces in the second half of his career and he shows Marrinan and Dewey some of the items he has amassed for future projects, including a a fountain made out of stone turtles. Carp founder Marilyn Nix recalls how empty his heyday studio was, as he needed few materials for something like `Fire Roll' (1973), in which he used his own body to put out a pair of burning pair of pants. Journalist Terry McDonell remembers going to a beach to photograph him firing at planes taking off from Los Angeles Airport and he laughs reflecting on the pleasure Burden took in shocking people with efforts like `Dead Man' (1972), which led to him being arrested for lying beside a car in the street beneath a large tarpaulin.

Around this time, the press latched on to the `art martyr' and he became something of a celebrity. David Bowie sang about him in `Joe the Lion' on the Heroes album and Marina Abramovic recalls him being so famous that even the Yugoslavian media covered him. At the Basel Art Fair, he was knocked down some stairs for `Kunst Kick' and artist Vito Acconci applauded him for bringing a new aggression to art. But some felt he was simply seeking his 15 minutes and Sewell repeats his accusations of charlatanry against a Burden interview in which he claims Evel Knievel was a trickster, while his art was real. But museum educator Phyllis Lutjeans remembers him as being reticent about appearing on her show for `TV Hijack' (1972), which saw him put a knife to her throat until the network went live and he proceeded to trash the set. Lutjeans speaks calmly about the 25 seconds of uncertainty with a blade against her windpipe, as she is now proud to be part of art history.

In the studio, assistants Tom Rogeberg and Lisa McLauglin help Burden repair the old LA streetlamps he is going to use in `Urban Light'. But we swept back again to Burden's unhappy period in New York when his marriage fell apart after he had an affair with Alexis Smith and he owned up in a film entitled `The Confession' (1974). Wilhite commends this action for its honesty and declares that Burden's life was his art, but many will regard this as an act of self-aggrandising chauvinist cowardice and there is a smugness about the game of strip poker he filmed with Smith as `Afternoon at the Portarossa Hotel' (1975), which ended with him prodding her naked body with a long stick.

Burden next went to Chicago to perform `Doomed' (1975) at the Museum of Contemporary Art, where a crowd of around 400 (including Sun Times film critic Roger Ebert) gathered to watch him start a wall clock and lie between two large sheets of glass. As museum employee Dennis O'Shea recalls, no one really knew what he was trying to achieve or how long he would remain motionless on the glass. Eventually, a doctor became concerned for his health. But the moment a glass of water was placed beside him, Burden rose (after 45 hours and 10 minutes) and walked out of the room to return with a hammer to smash the clock and, with that blow, he virtually ceased to be a performance artist.

When he returned with `The Big Wheel' (1979), he had moved into gargantuan sculptures and he is filmed revving a motorbike being powered by a flywheel revolving at an unnerving rate. Wilhite and former assistant Jonathan Gold recall discussing the damage that could be caused if the wheel broke free and artist Ed Ruscha remembers the floor shaking. The following year, he reacted badly to Smith breaking up with him and began drinking and taking large amounts of cocaine. He also made `Big Wrench' (1980), a film in which he clutched a giant spanner in front of a screen showing footage of the truck he named `Big Job' and used to drive off his anger at being dumped. This was followed by `There Have Been Some Pretty Wild Rumours' (1981), in which he described how it felt to carry around a loaded Uzi. He also celebrated the 10th anniversary of `Shoot' with `The Hole' (1980), in which he had hoped to shoot at Gold (who refused the invitation).

According to Magasin 3 director David Neuman, this lost weekend petered out after Burden moved to Topanga and he rarely ventured back into the art world and broke off his connections with many old friends. Footage of `B-Car' (1975), `Honest Labour' (1979) and `Beam Drop' (1984) show him riding a lie-flat skeletal vehicle, digging a ditch and dropping girders from a crane into wet concrete. But he returned to the gallery for `The Reason for the Neutron Bomb' (1987), which consisted of 50,000 nickels bearing a trimmed matchstick to represent the number of tanks the Soviet Union had positioned behind the Iron Curtain. A companion piece, `All the Submarines in the United States' saw 625 cardboard replicas suspended from the ceiling by coils of wire.

Paul Schimmel remembers seeing `Medusa's Head' (1990) take shape in the studio, as Burden added more model railway track and scale engines to a symbolic representation of the 19th-century nightmare that the planet would be overrun by steam locomotives. Dealer Larry Gagosian says it blew his mind, while tennis ace John McEnroe declares himself to be a kindred spirit as he eulogises about `Hell Gate Bridge' (1998). But, while critic Peter Plagens sings his praises, Sewell is wheeled out again to admonish US galleries for commissioning tosh. We also learn how he quit his post as a senior lecturer at UCLA (as did second wife Nancy Rubin) after a student did a Russian Roulette piece in his class and he was blamed for being irresponsible because he had set this agenda with `Shoot'. But this muddled section feels like a hectic collage of uncontextualised information that emphasises rather than covers the gaps in the narrative.

In 2008, Burden used an Erector kit (similar to Meccano) to create `What My Dad Gave Me' (2008), a 65ft skyscraper that people could climb. He also used a children's toy for `Metropolis II' (2011), as he wove racetracks around a Los Angeles skyline and used sequencing to whizz model cars along them to convey the kinetic nature of the city through its traffic flow. Even on film, this is a dazzling piece and it must look as amazing in close-up as architect Frank Gehry suggests. But Burden is reluctant to discuss anything other than the fact he took an enormous risk by making it on spec. LA Times critic Christopher Knight is equally awed by `Urban Light', which has become something of a beloved landmark and helped reinvent a dangerous maverick as a respectable citizen.

However, `Ode to Santos-Dumont' would be Burden's last completed work. It was inspired by the flight of pioneering Brazilian aviator Alberto Santos-Dumont around the Eiffel Tower and machinist John Biggs reflects on his satisfaction on realising this last dream and his determination to keep secret the gravity of the illness that would kill him five days before his swan song took flight.

A sequence of works not referenced in the picture are shown in the margins as the credits roll, but Marrinan and Dewey opt against a summation of Burden's achievement. They also decide not to place it in a wider context that would reveal him not to be the only rebel in the village, but one of many kicking against the system in conceptual and performance art, as well as painting, sculpture and film. The co-directors also make the mistake of cluttering their survey with friends and critics who appear to make one remark and then disappear without the audience being able to gauge the value of their expertise. Moreover, by relying so heavily on Brian Sewell to gainsay the gushing, they make him look like a toffee-nosed British crank rather than the voice of a sizeable constituency.

But what most infuriates about this well-intentioned profile is the reluctance to persuade Burden to explore his legacy in any depth. He is shown pottering around his workshop with his dogs, but we don't see him doing any meaningful work or providing any tangible insight into his ongoing projects. Furthermore, he is allowed to get away with comparing 1970s output to a girlfriend he doesn't wish to revisit, while the artworks and antics of his wilderness years are skated over with blitheness that suggests deals were struck in order for the film-makers to have their privileged access.

This is irksome, as Burden is a fascinating character and his stunt period work remains challenging and provocative four decades on. Moreover, the archive footage is intelligently used to capture Burden at his peak. But it would be nice to know what happened when he came off the rails and how the angry young man became such an avuncular crowd-pleaser without sacrificing the singularity of his vision.

With North Korea becoming a troubling fixture in the headlines, Dochouse makes a timely intervention with Cho Sung-Hyung's My Brothers and Sisters in the North. In order to become the first South Korean to secure official permission to film on the other side of the 38th Parallel, Cho had to take German citizenship and was accompanied on all her trips to see how ordinary people deal with living in one of the world's least understood states. She spent around a month in North Korea and what she recorded makes for fascinating contrast with the content of such recent documentaries as Mads Brügger's The Red Chapel (2009), Marc Wiese's Camp 14: Total Control Zone (2012) and Álvaro Longoria's The Propaganda Game (2015).

Keen to see how the reality differed from the Western image of North Korea, Cho first visits Baekdu Mountain, the supposed birthplace of the Korean race and of Kim Jong-Il. As he is known as a Sun of the 21st Century, North Koreans in military uniform cheer the dawn before posing for photographs with Cho. A guide describes the hardships of Kims early life and how mother Kim Jong-suk struggled to feed him in a humble hut.

After following a man cycling along the empty streets of Pyongyang to the accompaniment of a song extolling Kim Jong-un's love of his subjects, Cho drops in to the Munshu Water Park. This is a swimming and leisure complex and she is shown round by attendant Ri Ju-hyok who reveals that Saturdays are quiet because it is a political education day and most people have to study the writings of the Great Leader. He also informs Cho that Kim Jong-un supervised the design and construction of the pools with their chutes and slides. It's a large complex, but it's sparsely populated and Cho learns that women are forbidden to wear bikinis as they go against Korean custom. Ju-hyok takes her to the CCTV room and divulges that Kim Jong-un once paid a visit at 3am to see how the facility could be improved to meet his exacting standards and this dedication made the attendant realise how much harder he had to work to live up to his leader's expectations.

Cho is invited to supper with Ju-hyok and his sister, Ri Ok-hi, and grandmother, Ri Ok-gyong. She has raised the siblings since they lost their parents and Ju-hyok jokes that she can be a bit of a tiger who rants at him when things go wrong. But Ok-gyong is on her best behaviour for the camera and enjoys teasing her grandson, who regrets being forced to leave the army to take a university course. The demure Ok-hi is an officer in the military, but she is unable to discuss her duties beyond revealing that she is involved in combat training. She is coming to the end of her decade in uniform and will soon marry a student, who is a neighbour of her aunt. Cho is intrigued by what sounds like an arranged match, but the hesitancy of the replies dissuades her from probing too deeply.

The next port of call is the Kim Jong-suk Textile Factory, where propaganda slogans decorate every wall and a man is sketching and taking pictures of one of the female staff. He is based at the Mansudae Art Studio and adopts a socialist realist painting style to show North Korean life at its best. He admits to swapping the face of his model with a prettier girl he saw playing tennis and suggests that everyone would rather look at beauty than plain people. Cho jokes that a woman in another picture resembles her, but the artist insists that Cho is much cuter than his model, who has been used to highlight the striking looks of her friend playing table tennis.

Having watched some young boys doing football training outside the Rungrado May Day Stadium, Cho goes to the International Football School. A class in Korean and English touches on counting from one to 10 and singing `One Man Went to Mow', with the American-accented female teacher fulsomely praising the pupils at every opportunity. The principal explains that the school opened on 31 May 2013 and is part of Kim Jong-un's vision for a well-educated and sportingly competitive nation. He invites Cho into a classroom, where another female teacher plays the keyboard for three boys to sing about mothers and Kim Jong-il. The odd Chelsea and Manchester United shirt can be spotted on the students, who grow tall on such good food that they don't want to go back home. Indeed, some are reluctant to return to do their homework, but the zealous teacher atones for their shyness in front of the camera.

Heading 70km south of Pyongyang, Cho travels to the collective farm of Migok, which nestles in the shade of some mountains and provides homes to 800 families. The unspoilt landscape exceeds Cho's expectations and makes her nostalgic for the South's lost rural idyll. She drops into the kindergarten, where the older children sing and exercise and the younger ones stare at the camera and look around rather than concentrating on the paean to Kim Jong-un they are supposed to be learning.

She sees a driver maintaining his tractor for the glory of the Leader and a farm supervisor tells her about Kim Il-sung visiting in the 1970s and encouraging the workers to live longer by using machinery. He also explains how workers are rewarded according to their efforts and how each family donates `patriotic rice' so that everyone has enough to eat. Cho is taken by this concept, but her host is far too interested in saying all the right things and declaring how a strong state will keep the imperialists away for the viewer not to realise that he is spouting approved slogans and statistics.

The tractor driver takes Cho to his home and shows her the solar electricity panel and the methane gas installation that uses human and animal excrement. He is proud of his fertiliser heap, as it makes him extra money, and the rabbits he keeps in a hutch inside the house. The kitchen can be heated with straw in the winter, while he has a black-and-white television to watch when the transformer signal is too low to use the colour set. He stands in the middle of his bedroom-cum-lounge and seems content with his lot. But, once again, one is aware of the minders standing behind Cho and her crew and it seems clear that the ordinary people she has asked to meet have been well briefed before her arrival.

While his wife cooks, Cho asks how they met and she smiles as she recalls falling in love at first sight with a handsome man on military service. She admires his manly ability to do most things and hopes her son follows him after being in the army. Her daughter wants to be a teacher, but she never fulfilled her own dream to act or sing and she looks a little wistful for a moment before grinning in resignation. But she does sing with a sextet that plays in the collective theatre and everyone in the packed auditorium claps along to the patriotic ditties extolling the virtues of Kim Jong-un. Five hours and 200km to the east, lies Wonsan, the port capital of Kangwon Province, which is the sixth-largest city in North Korea, with a population of 330,000. En route, Cho sees lots of people sitting at the side of the road with their luggage and she wonders who they are and where they are going. But she seemingly knew enough by this juncture not to ask her escorts if they were unwilling to volunteer any information. Slow-motion tracking shots allow the audience to see the shabbier authenticity of the streets compared to the manicured perfection of Pyongyang.

The Patriotic Clothing Factory is much less grand than the one seen earlier. Arriving at 7.30am, the female staff listen to updates on the achievements of the Marshal before singing a song to boost the spirit of co-operation. They have a two-hour lunch break and the female manager discloses that the workforce stays behind for daily gymnastics. She also says it would be nice if international sanctions were lifted so they could export directly to the US and Canada rather than through China. After the manager shows off some of the items being produced, Cho drifts around the factory and listens in to the end-of-day notices, when those who did well are applauded and those who had trouble adjusting to a new line are encouraged to do better tomorrow. It all seems supportive, but an air of intimidation can also be detected in the faces of the workers sitting cross-legged on the floor in identical uniforms.

Following a storm in the night, Cho interviews one of the factory girls as they stroll on the beach. She had hoped to be a professional footballer, but decided she needed to learn how to cook and sew and took her job to become `a decent woman'. Amusingly, Cho bumps her head on the metal frame of a parasol and she gives it a frustrated thump before they sit down to chat about payment according to effort and the monthly supplement of food stamps. Letting sand run through her fingers, the young woman insists it's a fair system and takes pride in the fact that people look good in the clothes she makes. One day, she would like to design her own clothes, but she is happy to work hard and have fun with her friends. When Cho asks if she would like to be alone sometimes, she jokes that she has time to herself at home, but sharing enjoyment is a privilege.

She would like to visit Pyongyang and it's here Cho returns to take in sights like the Patriotic Martyrs' Cemetery. Ri Ju-hyok accompanies his sister and grandmother to lay flowers at the memorials and Ok-gyong reveals that her father was jailed by the Japanese after the 1936 revolution and executed shortly before the end of the Second World War. She hopes for reunification so that she can bring his remains back from a mass grave in Seoul. Her relatives wince slightly, as Ok-gyong asks Cho to do her best to help bring about the Korea her father died for and she promises she will do what she can.

Back home, Ok-gyong reveals that she received her apartment from Kim Il-sung as the widow of a war hero and she wishes Ju-hyok could be as brave as the soldier she saw in a film who sacrificed himself to save a train. He lowers his eyes as he listens to her hoping the younger generations would not betray those who forged the revolution and he concurs that the deeds of the past should lead to future greatness. With genuine warmth, Ok-gyong hopes to see Cho again after reunification and urges her to come back and find her.

It's a touchingly human end to an otherwise sobering snapshot of a country convinced of its rectitude and the unstinting benevolence of its ruling dynasty. But, while Cho and cinematographer Julie Daschner are afforded a warm welcome wherever they go, the suspicion lingers that the tour has been carefully choreographed to show North Korea in the best possible light. As in previous screen excursions, there are no questioning, let alone dissenting voices and there is no sign of the grimmer reality that is endured by the millions not fortunate enough to work at an economic showpiece. Cho appears aware she is being stage-managed, but her line of inquiry astutely deflects those in positions of authority into rambling and sometimes contradictory answers that imply hasty committal to memory rather than deeply held conviction.

The Ri family are the only readily identifiable persons in the film, although Kang Yong-min and Go Gwack-bok (possibly the farming couple) and Kim Chun-hyang and Ri Gum-hyang (the factory women in Kangwon) are also thanked in the credits, which play out to Peyman Yazdanian's subtle score. In order to accept her invitation, Cho had to postpone work on a documentary about the relationships that developed between East German women and the North Korean men who were sent behind the Iron Curtain to study. On the basis of this compassionate picture, one can but hope she manages to complete Loved, Engaged, Lost and that it is shown in the UK.