With his Sundance film festival and institute, Robert Redford used his considerable power to bring generations of talented film-makers to a bigger audience

Robert Redford, who died at the age of 89 on Tuesday, will rightly be remembered as one of Hollywood’s finest leading men, a true-blue movie star and assured actor who was, to quote my mother and surely many others, “very, very handsome”. His many iconic performances – in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, All the President’s Men, The Way We Were, The Sting and more – certainly left an indelible mark on American movies. But he should perhaps be remembered more for his work behind the camera, as the country’s greatest benefactor of independent cinema.

Through his Sundance film festival and non-profit institute, Redford lent his considerable star power and funds to American independent film, and created what is still its most secure and enduring pillar of support. He provided maverick, cutting-edge film-making with a freewheeling marketplace and crucial buzz, helping to launch the careers of a true who’s who of critically acclaimed directors across generations. With Sundance, Redford played the role of mentor, patron, champion of the small and scrappy, benevolent godfather of independent cinema. It’s through Sundance, rather than his films, that Redford became, as the Black List founder Franklin Leonard put it on X, “arguably the film industry’s most consequential American over the last fifty years”.

Witty, foul-mouthed, camp and punky, it was the 00s answer to slick superclubs and the rock patriarchy. As its rough, raw sound returns, the scene’s eyeliner-ed heroes, from Peaches to Jonny Slut, relive its excesses

Jonny Melton knew that his club night Nag Nag Nag had reached some kind of tipping point when he peered out of the DJ booth and spotted Cilla Black on the dancefloor. “I think that’s the only time I got really excited,” he laughs. “I was playing the Tobi Neumann remix of Khia’s My Neck, My Back, too – ‘my neck, my back, lick my pussy and my crack’ – and there was Cilla, grooving on down. You know, it’s not Bobby Gillespie or Gwen Stefani, it’s fucking Cilla Black. I’ve got no idea how she ended up there, but I’ve heard since that she was apparently a bit of a party animal.”

It seems fair to say that a visit from Our Cilla was not what Melton expected when he started Nag Nag Nag in London in 2002. A former member of 80s goth band Specimen who DJed under the name Jonny Slut, he’d been inspired by a fresh wave of electronic music synchronously appearing in different locations around the world. Germany had feminist collective Chicks on Speed and DJ Hell with his groundbreaking label International DeeJay Gigolos. France produced Miss Kittin and The Hacker, Vitalic and Electrosexual. Britain spawned icy electro-pop quartet Ladytron and noisy, sex-obsessed trio Add N To (X). Canada spawned Tiga and Merrill Nisker, who abandoned the alt-rock sound of her debut album Fancypants Hoodlum and, with the aid of a Roland MC-505 “groovebox”, reinvented herself as Peaches. New York had performance art inspired duo Fischerspooner and a collection of artists centred around DJ and producer Larry Tee, who gave the sound a name: electroclash.

He marched against the Vietnam war, supported the Black Panthers, has protested over animal rights, ended up in prison after a climate sit-in – and starred in Babe, LA Confidential and Succession. He explains how he became the ultimate activist-actor

Amid the hustle of midtown Manhattan on Wednesday 11 May 2022, James Cromwell walked into Starbucks, glued his hand to a counter and complained about the surcharges on vegan milks. “When will you stop raking in huge profits while customers, animals and the environment suffer?” Cromwell boomed as fellow activists streamed the protest online.

But the insouciant patrons of Starbucks paid little heed. Perhaps they didn’t realise they were in the company of the tallest person ever nominated for an acting Oscar, deliverer of one of the best speeches in Succession, and the only actor to utter the words “star trek” in a Star Trek production. Police arrived to shut down the store.

From publicly shunning British Palestinians, to supplying parts for fighter jets, Labour looks increasingly out of step with international opinion

On Tuesday, a UN commission of inquiry concluded that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. Its conclusion is unsurprising, with few states in history having been so brazen about their intentions. To take just two examples: in May, the Israeli finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, said that “Gaza will be entirely destroyed”; a week later, prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu boasted that Israel is “destroying more and more houses [in Gaza, and Palestinians accordingly] have nowhere to return”.

At the beginning of this month, Labour’s deputy prime minister and former foreign secretary, David Lammy, wrote a letter to the chair of the international development committee, Sarah Champion, declaring that “the government has carefully considered the risk of genocide”, and has not concluded that Israel is acting with genocidal intent. How can two bodies come to such different endpoints? The British government has not come to a conclusion on genocide, because if it was to, it would have to face up to its complicity.

Tommy Robinson’s ‘free speech’ protest attracted more than 100,000 people – and it was easy to find links to key political figures and events in the US

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A young man in a suit made of union jacks held up a framed photograph of their hero above his head. The crowd loudly chanted the name. The focus of this acclamation was not Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, better known as Tommy Robinson, the organiser of the so-called “free speech” march in central London last Saturday.

They were instead shouting themselves hoarse for Charlie Kirk, the murdered political activist from Cook County in the US state of Illinois.

The big Beijing military parade included new weaponry that analysts say could potentially threaten the US Pacific territory

Like most people living in Guam, Jacqueline Guzman is used to hearing about the threat from China. The US territory of about 170,000 people lies in the Pacific Ocean and despite growing geopolitical tensions in the region, the cost of living rather than military aggression is front of mind for many residents.

Guzman says she is worried “about paying bills” and has trust in the US government to protect her.

US president arrives on Tuesday ahead of a lavish programme, as Sadiq Khan calls for UK leaders not to shy away from ‘being critical’

Donald Trump has landed in the UK ahead of an unprecedented second state visit.

The US president and the first lady, Melania Trump, touched down on Tuesday evening at London Stansted onboard Air Force One ahead of a series of events over the next two days, including being hosted by King Charles, military parades and a possible flypast by the Red Arrows alongside British and American F-35 jets.

Food prices rise at fastest rate since January 2024 with vegetables, milk, cheese and fish going up; Bank of England expected to keep interest rates on hold on Thursday

Price growth for services, which is closely watched by the Bank of England, has slowed to 4.7% from 5% in July, while goods inflation ticked up to 2.8% from 2.7%.

Sanjay Raja, chief UK economist at Deutsche Bank, said:

The good news is that August inflation data has corrected some of the upside surprise we saw last month. The bad news is that CPI has maybe a little further to go before hitting its peak. Indeed, food inflation continues to push higher – though survey data suggest that we may be nearing the peak on this front too. And despite better services data this morning, inflation in the largest basket remains sticky. To be sure, there are some encouraging bits of information in today’s report – and we will need to see more of this for the Bank of England to cut Bank Rate again.

This is why we continue to see a slightly longer pause when it comes to the Bank’s next rate move. For us, the MPC [monetary policy committee] may want to wait for a larger accumulation of evidence before dialling down restrictive policy again. Seeing the downtrend in CPI begin could assuage fears on the committee that the hump in inflation is not turning into a plateau.

Food price inflation is once again up, after the hottest spring and summer on record has hit UK farmers ability to grow crops and feed their animals, with the UK again facing one of its worst harvests in decades.

Although this extreme weather will only be part of the story in these price rises, the signature of climate change is clear. And it’s not just British grown foods such as beef, milk and vegetables that are rising, but also prices for food and drink like chocolate and coffee too, both driven up by extreme weather linked to climate change.

Central banks are clear that climate change increases food prices in ways they cannot control or predict, creating systemic risk to our food system. There is no monetary policy lever they can pull to address this. Only by reducing our emissions to net zero and bringing balance back to our climate will we limit the impact of climate change on food prices in the future.

The Israeli military said the route via Salah al-Din street ‘will be open for 48 hours only’

A coalition of leading aid groups on Wednesday urged the international community to take stronger measures to stop Israel’s offensive on Gaza City. It also highlighted findings by a commission of UN experts that found Israel was committing genocide in Gaza.

According to the Associated Press (AP), the statement read:

What we are witnessing in Gaza is not only an unprecedented humanitarian catastrophe, but what the UN commission of inquiry has now concluded is a genocide.

States must use every available political, economic, and legal tool at their disposal to intervene. Rhetoric and half measures are not enough. This moment demands decisive action.

Negotiations soon to begin on UK’s entry to Safe scheme, which it hopes will secure bigger role for its defence firms

France has proposed limiting the use of British-produced military components in the EU’s €150bn defence fund, in a move that could complicate negotiations over the UK’s entry into the scheme.

Four diplomatic sources told the Guardian that French officials had proposed a 50% ceiling on the value of UK components in projects financed through the EU’s €150bn Security Action for Europe (Safe) fund.