minorities
Why are many critics giving the problematic Three Billboards a pass? Shawn offers his take and advocates for a focus on critical diversity.
Editor in Chief Manon de Reeper is attending Los Angeles Film Festival and saw Moko Jumbie & Mighty Ground – here’s her report.
Andrew Cohn’s documentary Night School tells a largely positive story about American poverty, but depends too much on its captivating subjects.
Growing up as a first generation Asian American, I looked to television and cinema for hints to “fit in” with all the other Americans, to improve my grammar and English, to embrace the idea of being American. In that transition, I severed some of my Filipino roots. I can understand Tagalog, but I can’t speak it.
It’s critical that media show that all people belong. However, very few films in the United States are made by and about ethnic minorities.
There are two thoughts that go through your head when you hear about a Romanian film which won the Silver Bear for its director Radu June (at the 2015 Berlin Film Festival), and which has been earmarked as the country’s entry into the Foreign Film category at this year’s Oscars. The first is that this must be a very good film indeed. The other is that this is the sort of film that groups of people gather around and agree is an artistic and important film, but ultimately it’s not very entertaining.
What inspired me to begin this series was actually the knowledge that Harper Lee, the author of To Kill A Mockingbird, was going to be releasing a new novel called Go Set a Watchmen. As I had remembered being fond of Lee’s writing, I was planning to read it. (I still have not, but am hoping to get to it after this).
Le Havre (2011) is a still, quiet and dryly hilarious film. It has many of the qualities of a Japanese master like Mizoguchi, but if he had emigrated to a small French port and had been forced to make working class comedies. It focuses on a shoe shiner called Marcel Marx whose wife contracts a seemingly terminal disease.
Terrance is a documentary short made by Joris Debeij and forms part of a series of films (I Am Los Angeles) that focus on the stories of people who live in Los Angeles. Terrance documents the life of the young black teenager, Terrance Thompson, his losses, and his resulting depression. All things going to plan, Terrance Thompson will have graduated high school by the time you read this review.
Chicagoland Shorts is a new series of films curated by Eugene Sun Park and Kayla Ginsburg (with the aid of Beckie Stocchetti). The series pulls together an eclectic mix of shorts all made by Chicago-based filmmakers. The films range from original narratives to real stories, from animations to found footage pieces (those made using pre-existing film or photographs).
