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Arts & Culture, Film, The Critics

Private Theatre: Oslo, August 31st

By Tom Nixon

Senior film critic Tom Nixon revisits Joachim Trier’s haunting sophomore film about a recovering drug addict.

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Arts & Culture, Film

Private Theatre: Vamps & Only Lovers Left Alive

By Tom Nixon

Senior film critic Tom Nixon writes on two destined-to-be-dismissed vampire comedies with melancholy undertones.

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Arts & Culture, Film, The Critics

Private Theatre: The Deep Blue Sea

By Tom Nixon

Senior film critic Tom Nixon writes on one of this decade’s finest melodramas.

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Arts & Culture, Film, The Critics

Private Theatre: Meek’s Cutoff

By Tom Nixon

Senior film critic Tom Nixon writes on why Kelly Reichardt’s Meek’s Cutoff remains one of the best films of the decade so far.

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Arts & Culture, Film, The Critics

Private Theatre: Cosmopolis

By Tom Nixon

Senior Film Critic Tom Nixon mounts a defense for the much-maligned Cosmopolis in anticipation of David Cronenberg’s upcoming film Maps to the Stars.

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Arts & Culture, Film, Special Features

Independent I: An Interview with Davina Lee

By Tom Nixon

“Film is the buzz-word right now in the Caribbean.” Senior Film Critic Tom Nixon interviews Davina Lee, one of St. Lucia’s top filmmakers, about her new film The Coming of Org.

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Arts & Culture, Film, Magazine

The Gaze of the Voyeur

By Jihane Mossali, Tom Nixon

“Women are denied agency, defined only in relation to the active gaze of the male viewer, or male characters with whom the viewer is encouraged to relate,” writes Senior Film Critic Tom Nixon in the Winter 2014 issue.

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Arts & Culture, Film, The Critics

Private Theatre: White Reindeer

By Tom Nixon

Senior Film Critic Tom Nixon argues that Zach Clark’s christmas comedy White Reindeer becomes even more relevant as we settle into the new year.

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Arts & Culture, Film

Private Theatre: Harmony Korine’s Spring Breakers

By Tom Nixon

Film Critic Tom Nixon writes about Harmony Korine’s ‘Spring Breakers’

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Arts & Culture, Film, The Critics

Halloween & Halloween: Or How We Learned To Stop Worrying and Love the Boogeyman

By Tom Nixon

Just as trick-or-treaters start rolling into town, Tom Nixon talks about Halloween and the evolution of its “heroes” in the past decades.

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In the Magazine

A Word from the Editor

Don’t cry like a girl. Be a (wo)man.

Why holding up the women in our lives can help build a nation, in place of tearing it down.

Literature

This House is an African House

"This house is an African house./ This your body is an African woman’s body..." By Kadija Sesay.

Literature

Shoots

"Sapling legs bend smoothly, power foot in place,/ her back, parallel to solid ground,/ makes her torso a table of support..." By Kadija Sesay.

Literature

A Dry Season Doctor in West Africa

"She presses her toes together. I will never marry, she says. Jamais dans cette vie! Where can I find a man like you?" By...

In the Issue

Property of a Sorceress

"She died under mango trees, under kola nut/ and avocado trees, her nose pressed to their roots,/ her hands buried in dead leaves, her...

Literature

What Took Us to War

"What took us to war has again begun,/ and what took us to war/ has opened its wide mouth/ again to confuse us." By...

Literature

Sometimes, I Close My Eyes

"sometimes, this is the way of the world,/ the simple, ordinary world, where things are/ sometimes too ordinary to matter. Sometimes,/ I close my...

Literature

Quarter to War

"The footfalls fading from the streets/ The trees departing from the avenues/ The sweat evaporating from the skin..." By Jumoke Verissimo.

Literature

Transgendered

"Lagos is a chronicle of liquid geographies/ Swimming on every tongue..." By Jumoke Verissimo.

Fiction

Sketches of my Mother

"The mother of my memories was elegant. She would not step out of the house without her trademark red lipstick and perfect hair. She...

Fiction

The Way of Meat

"Every day—any day—any one of us could be picked out for any reason, and we would be... We’d part like hair, pushing into the...

Fiction

Between Two Worlds

"Ursula spotted the three black students immediately. Everyone did. They could not be missed because they kept to themselves and apart from the rest...."...

Essays

Talking Gender

"In fact it is often through the uninformed use of such words that language becomes a tool in perpetuating sexism and violence against women...

Essays

Unmasking Female Circumcision

"Though the origins of the practice are unknown, many medical historians believe that FGM dates back to at least 2,000 years." Gimel Samera looks...

Essays

Not Just A Phase

"...in the workplace, a person can practically be forced out of their job by discrimination, taking numerous days off for fear of their physical...

Essays

The Birth of Bigotry

"The psychology of prejudice demands that we are each our own moral police". Maria Amir on the roots of bigotry and intolerance.

Fiction

The Score

"The person on the floor was unmistakeably dead. It looked like a woman; she couldn’t be sure yet..." By Hawa Jande Golakai.

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One last love letter...

April 24, 2021

It has taken us some time and patience to come to this decision. TMS would not have seen the success that it did without our readers and the tireless team that ran the magazine for the better part of eight years.

But… all good things must come to an end, especially when we look at the ever-expanding art and literary landscape in Pakistan, the country of the magazine’s birth.

We are amazed and proud of what the next generation of creators are working with, the themes they are featuring, and their inclusivity in the diversity of voices they are publishing. When TMS began, this was the world we envisioned…

Though the magazine has closed and our submissions shuttered, this website will remain open for the foreseeable future as an archive of the great work we published and the astounding collection of diverse voices we were privileged to feature.

If, however, someone is interested in picking up the baton, please email Maryam Piracha, the editor, at maryamp@themissingslate.com.

Farewell, fam! It’s been quite a ride.