May physical media picks, from indigenous Algerian funk to Graydon Carter's memoir

Other selections include a film by Abbas Kiarostami and a book by Isabel Allende

Shamy El Vaz and Karim Abdenour founded the Kabyle band Les Abranis in the late 1960s. Photo: MLP Music

As physical media continues its comeback, The National rounds up the best releases across film, music, art and more.

Album No 1 by Les Abranis

Les Abranis's acclaimed 1983 album has never before been reissued. Photo: MLP Music

Algeria has a rich musical heritage – much of which the world has yet to discover. For instance, The music of the Kabyle people, indigenous to the north of the country, features some of the funkiest grooves in North Africa. Curious? Pick up Album No 1 by Kabyle group Les Abranis, a hidden gem released in 1983 and long circulated only within Algerian communities in France and the Maghreb region.

While the band was popular in Algeria, they also faced opposition from the country’s authorities, who viewed them as a societal threat due to their use of the Kabyle language, instead of Arabic. Reissued for the first time since its original release by Wewantsounds, this is a must-have for fans of so-called habibi funk.

William Mullally, arts and culture editor

My Name Is Emilia del Valle by Isabel Allende

My Name Is Emilia del Valle by Isabel Allende. Photo: Penguin Random House

I absolutely love Chilean-American author Isabel Allende – both Of Love and Shadows (De amor y de sombra) and The House of the Spirits (La casa de los espiritus) are novels I have come back to many times over the years. This May, she is releasing a new novel, My Name Is Emilia del Valle (Mi nombre es Emilia del Valle). Set in San Francisco and Chile in the 19th century, the story follows the eponymous Emilia Del Valle, daughter of an Irish nun, who is abandoned by her Chilean aristocrat partner. Emilia grows up to be a writer forced to publish her work under a male pseudonym and later as a journalist. Her work eventually takes her to Chile, where she sets out to uncover her family's roots.

Farah Andrews, head of features

When the Going Was Good by Graydon Carter

When the Going Was Good by Graydon Carter. Photo: Penguin Random House

Anytime I hear the expression “they don’t make 'em like they used to” I think of Graydon Carter, the legendary Canadian editor of Vanity Fair and Life. The brilliantly titled When the Going Was Good is his new memoir and it offers a lavish, name-dropping romp through the golden age of magazine publishing. From the hallways of Time in the 1970s to the seemingly endless budgets of Vanity Fair in its heyday, Carter tells tales – and he can certainly tell a tale – of decades of journalistic excess and achievement with disarming candour and sharp wit. He dishes on other luminaries - Anna Wintour, Princess Margaret and Christopher Hitchens - with relish, sparing no one, least of all himself.

The book is rich with scandalous anecdotes, from sky-high expense accounts to Oscar party hijinks, but what lingers is Carter’s irreverent joy in the trade. As co-founder of Spy, he helped to coin some long-lasting zingers aimed at then property developer Donald Trump – and the animosity lives on to this day. But beneath the glamour and high-society gossip lies a portrait of a bygone era when editors took wild risks and journalism was, in Carter’s words, “just plain fun". It is a compulsively readable love letter to an industry that is today – in the age of AI, algorithms and efficiency – a different beast altogether.

Nasri Atallah, editor of The National's Luxury magazine

The Wind will Carry Us, directed by Abbas Kiarostami

The Wind Will Carry Us by Abbas Kiarostami will be released on Blu-ray in May. Photo: Criterion

Abbas Kiarostami is rightfully considered the cream of the rich Iranian film director crop and, while The Wind Will Carry Us may not be the best introduction to his oeuvre – that honour goes to Close Up – this contemplative masterpiece is essential viewing. The story follows an undercover documentarian (Behzad Dorani) who is assigned to cover a small village's funeral rites, but is continually frustrated because his potential subject, a sickly elderly woman, refuses to die.

William Mullally, arts & culture editor

Demolition Man, directed by Marco Brambilla

Demolition Man. Photo: Arrow Video

Marco Brambilla's Demolition Man, starring Sylvester Stallone and Wesley Snipes, is not your average 1990s action sci-fi film. It barely broke even after its theatrical release, but its magic and the appreciation of audiences grew on home video.

Set in 2032, a police officer is awoken from his frozen state to pursue a criminal from his own time. In this future, crime is all but eradicated, but Snipes, the criminal from the past, wreaks havoc on the peaceful society.

The expertise and know-how of Stallone's character, John Spartan, is needed to pursue the criminal who uses methods all but unknown to the future. The film has been praised in recent times for predicting futuristic technology including video conferencing and social media.

Demolition Man has been remastered in 4K by Arrow Video.

Faisal Al Zaabi, gaming and social media writer