DVD: Battle for Sevastopol

Impressive Russian World War II sniper story with international dimension

The latest in a long tradition of Russian Second World War films, Sergei Mokritsky’s Battle for Sevastopol itself emerged out of conflict. Initiated as a "status" joint project between Russia and Ukraine well before relations between those two countries soured, production continued despite the rift that deepened between them. The film premiered in both on the same day in April 2015, earning considerable – and equal – box office success on both sides of a border riven by war.

theartsdesk in Göttingen: HandelFest 2016

Two big concert successes atone for one frigid staging in German Arcadia

What Auden called "the sexy airs of summer" arrived early in Göttingen this year. Frog action in the Botanical Gardens of the town's pioneering University may have been less clamorous than when I first came here in late rather than early May (the annual International Handel Festival usually begins whenever the Ascension Day holiday happens to be, so it's a moveable celebration).

Captain America: Civil War

CAPTAIN AMERICA: CIVIL WAR Rousing romp from the Marvel universe is funny, sad, satirical and spectacular

Rousing romp from the Marvel universe is funny, sad, satirical and spectacular

This rousing instalment from the Marvel universe shares self-evident similarities with Batman vs Superman, the latest effort from their DC rivals. In both films we see superheroes at loggerheads, and in each case it's because they find themselves in a changing world where it's no longer acceptable for super-beings to roam around the planet leaving massive swathes of collateral damage in their wake.

Europe: Them or Us, BBC Two

EUROPE: THEM OR US, BBC TWO Nick Robinson tiptoes cautiously through the minefield of Britain's relations with Europe

Nick Robinson tiptoes cautiously through the minefield of Britain's relations with Europe

The BBC opened its examination of the history of European togetherness with presenter Nick Robinson beaming at us from the top of those White Cliffs, looking out at the glistening sea which made us an island (until, of course, Mrs Thatcher supported the Channel Tunnel).

CD: Joachim Kühn - Beauty & Truth

The Doors meet contemporary European jazz

The youthful old master of European jazz raps on the Doors of Perception for his latest album, Beauty & Truth, with his piano trio of drummer Eric Schafer and bassist Chris Jennings. Their subject for analysis is The Doors’ “The End” and “Riders on the Storm”, delivering distilled and deconstructed versions of the band’s music and the singer’s intent – both dark, apocalyptic Sixties tone poems of dread and release, and both led by Shafer’s superb drumming, with Jennings’s supple double bass tacking between that and Kühn’s finely fractured piano lines.

We Made It: Guitar Maker Brian Cohen

WE MADE IT: GUITAR MAKER BRIAN COHEN The incredible one-man string band

The incredible one-man string band

Tucked away in a warren of residential streets in the older part of Guildford, The Old Glassworks looks like a lock-up garage, and seems to have been designed to repel unwanted attention with a private force-field of anonymity. Once you've been welcomed inside, however, you find yourself in an improbable wonderland of mysterious musical instruments, from lutes and rare 17th century guitars to members of the violin family in various states of deconstruction.

theartsdesk in Berlin: Three Ballets

THEARTSDESK IN BERLIN: THREE BALLETS Versatile Staatsballett shine in Cranko, Duato, and a classic Giselle

Versatile Staatsballett shine in Cranko, Duato, and a classic Giselle

In London, seeing the same ballet company do three different pieces in three different theatres over four nights would be some kind of festival. In Berlin, it's just business as usual – albeit quite a busy week! – for the hard-working Staatsballett.

theartsdesk Q&A: Composer Pierre Boulez

RIP PIERRE BOULEZ The Arts Desk Q&A from 2011: the godfather of the avant-garde on how he changed music forever

Godfather of the avant-garde on how he changed music forever

David Nice writes: it hardly seemed possible, but a pivotal figure in the 20th century music scene has died, two months short of his 91st birthday. As composer, Boulez now seems not so much a game-changer as a constant innovator in one of many strands among the possibilities of contemporary music. He even admitted in an Edinburgh Festival interview that he and his colleagues may have underestimated the role played by the audience in absorbing his avant-gardism.

Kurt Masur (1927-2015)

KURT MASUR (1927-2015) Proms photographer Chris Christodoulou's marvellous sequence of images shows the conductor in playful rehearsal in 2007

Remembering an old-style master conductor in words and pictures

This is difficult. An official obituary, such as the one I’ve just finished for The Guardian, has no problem in pointing out the achievements of Kurt Masur’s distinguished career. Whatever his party-line status in Honecker’s East Germany, which he used to get the Leipzig Gewandhaus rebuilt to his own satisfaction, Masur did play a crucial role as one of five spokesmen preventing a Tiananmen Square-style massacre before the Berlin Wall fell.

DVD: Tenderness of the Wolves

Masterful Fassbinder-produced exploration of Germany’s 1920’s serial killer

Fritz Haarmann was – although the term wasn’t in use at the time – the first murderer to be recognised in Germany as a serial killer. He was executed in 1925 after being found guilty of 24 killings. Filmed in late 1973, Tenderness of the Wolves dramatises aspects of the case. It is directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s frequent collaborator Ulli Lomell – they had most recently worked together on Effi Briest.