Yes, Ma?mouna Doucour??s Cuties (Mignonnes) has created a great deal of controversy. I wouldn?t categorize that controversy as a tempest in a teapot, because the film does revolve around the sexualization of young women, but in a reflective and critical manner, not in...
?Fear has haunted Thomas to the very end.? Richard Wright?s 1940 novel Native Son is one of the standards of African-American literature. It has found its way to the screen a few times. The first such film, directed by Belgian director Pierre Chenal, was made in...
Paris has been a haven for American expatriot artists of all sorts, but especially for African-Americans. In Myth of a Colorblind France, from Alan Govenar, we get to see that history in the 20th century and how it continues today. However, just because...
?Your destiny is set.? Draupadi Unleashed, written and directed by Tony Stopperan, based on a book by Nisha Sabharwal, is the story of a young woman who struggles with her place in the very structured patriarchal society of aristocratic Indian society in the early...
Is ambition a good thing or a setting for disaster? Certainly it can challenge people to great things, but it also may lead to our downfalls. In the Israeli film God of the Piano, directed by Itay Tal, we see the darker side of ambition as it plays out in the life of...
Food and restaurants have become popular reality TV subjects, with at least one channel dedicated to such shows. R?mi Anfosso?s A Chef?s Journey may seem like something you would find on the Food Network, but it really doesn?t follow the template of those reality...
How best to describe I?m Thinking of Ending Things? The easy answer is that it?s a Charlie Kaufman film. (He both writes and directs.) His scripts (cf. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Being John Malkovich, Adaptation, and Synecdoche, New York) are always mind...
? ?I am strong. I am invincible. I am woman.? ? Those words were part of what became the anthem of the Second Wave Women?s Movement in the 1970s. Unjoo Moon makes it the cornerstone of her Helen Reddy biopic, I Am Woman. The film is in part a celebration of her music...
?The bottom line for why things haven?t changed is there is no love for black boys.? Sonia Lowman?s documentary Black Boys opens with former NFLer Greg Scruggs reading The Little Engine that Could to his toddler son. It transitions to a middle school age boy taking...