race
We had a chance to talk with Emily Keating, the Director of Education for Created Equal, a civil rights and film program for kids in Brooklyn.
Chapter & Verse is another strong reminder that stories about black lives must continue to be told—even if it treads familiar ground.
I Am Not Your Negro is a documentary based on the works of activist James Baldwin, and is overall a powerful examination of race in America.
What happened to the art of film criticism, the kind of visceral, honest prose delivered from titans like Pauline Kael? We are witnessing its noisy death rattle and few seem to care. Moonlight, the newest film from director and co-writer Barry Jenkins, is a literal coming-of-age story, chronicling the journey of a young, gay black man, Chiron, into adulthood amidst the rougher parts of Miami.
In Loving, Jeff Nichols’ historical drama about an interracial couple who helped change marriage laws in The United States, the characters are reflections of Nichols own lineage and it’s quite the different kind of biography.
Though Moonlight employs a stylistic, arthouse approach as opposed to a traditional narrative, it is nonetheless an important one to watch for people of all walks of life.
Ava DuVernay returns to the documentary format with 13th, a look at the amendment of the United States Constitution that simultaneously abolished slavery and established a loophole for denying rights to targeted groups. The troubling wording in the amendment has to do with convicted criminals, who are the only people exempt from the abolishment of slavery and involuntary servitude. That exemption, while small at the time, has snowballed into a huge issue thanks to America’s system of mass incarceration.
Has Scarlett Johansson ever hurt anyone? Really, has she? Yes, maybe her character Natasha Romanoff in the Iron Man and Avengers movie series has broken a few people’s bones, maybe a fibula here and there.
On Belle’s original release, I was intrigued by the film but felt no real urge to watch it. It almost seemed to sell itself on the back of its unusual story: a biracial woman born to aristocracy during the time of the slave trade.
Over at our official Facebook page, we are currently posting daily film recommendations, with each week being a different theme. This is a collection of those recommendations! This week’s theme is films which have passed the Ava DuVernay Diversity Test.