?We are responsible for the community we build and the stories we tell.? This is the tagline for AFI Fest 2021. That phrase appears on various promotional materials. It reflects the idea that films are more than just entertainment; they help to shape the way people...
Welcome to the 2021 edition of AFI Fest. Last year, the festival was all done virtually. This year is a hybrid with some films being available virtually and others only shown in the theaters at the TCL Chinese Theatres in Hollywood. The festival is abbreviated from...
Coming out in time for Veterans? Day is Sunken Roads: Three Generations After D-Day from documentarian Charlotte Juergens. In part it is a way of recording the memories of the ever-shrining number of veterans of that era. But more, it is a personal story of a much...
In Lindsay Gossling?s 13 Minutes, a natural catastrophe brings devastation to a community. But this isn?t your typical disaster movie that brings the survivors together to return to the way things were. Rather, this is really about the personal catastrophes that were...
?My baby?s life matters.? Unless we choose willful ignorance, we should all know that Black people in America have faced violence for a very long time. Sometimes that has happened at the hands of police. Sometimes it has happened in lynchings. But we need to remember...
?Without a boat you lose your way.? Is it possible to live in a rapidly changing world and stay true to the past? If we start giving up bits of our heritage, will there be anything left of it? Traditional ways of life compete with modernity in Alex Camilleri?s Luzzu....
?I want to see America be what she says she is in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. America, be what you proclaim yourself to be!? When filmmakers Julie Cohen and Betsy West were making the Oscar-nominated RGB, they came across a citation that...
Three Rules of Life: Never play cards with a guy named Doc.Never eat at a restaurant called Mom?sNever sleep with a woman whose troubles are worse than your own. Nelson Algren was one of the key writers of Post-World War II America. His writing was as plain-spoken as...
?Try not to run away from stuff that isn?t there.? Hudson, the first feature film from Sean Daniel Cunningham, received a fair number of awards from film festivals. It is certainly the kind of film that festival audiences like to find?a sweet, feel good story from a...