A few things that happen in the film: a violation of sexual boundaries involving an electric toothbrush, wanton keying of limousines, smelly situations at customs, a French nudist captivates a bored American doctor, the children decide they want to be a dead princess and a dead bunny for Halloween, stoned shenanigans in the co-op elevator, and Marion sells her soul, which results in a minor brawl.

And did I mention a cardboard cutout of Barack Obama is a major character?

Delpy, who wrote and directed the film, makes the most out of the short screentime cramming in as much commentary on family life and the art world as she possibly can. A follow-up to 2 Days in Paris, Delpy balances the pace of her city subjects with the quiet calamity of modern life. The film spins so fast that in the middle of the madness, it takes more than half of the movie before I realize 2 Days in New York has managed to pull off an amazing depiction on an interracial relationship. Race is not the most important thing between Marion and Mingus, and it certainly isn’t their primary conflict throughout the film. Instead, where race intersects with their lives is subtle.

If race is blatantly brought up as part of the plot, it is often played for cringe-inducing laughs. Manu, Marion’s former flame who is currently dating her sister Rose, is a one-stop shop for racial ignorance posing as innocence. He tries to curry favor with Mingus’ sister Elizabeth (Malinda Williams) by saying she looks “just like Beyonce, only sexier.” Chagrined at finding out that Mingus doesn’t smoke weed, he off-handley remarks that Marion “found the only black guy in New York that doesn’t smoke.” And when Mingus’ friend from the Obama Administration comes to town, Mingus is mortified when Manu starts randomly calling him “Kumar.” (This friend was not played by Kal Penn.) Luckily, after a day or so, Manu is deported for lighting up in front of a police station.

2 Days in New York is a fun romp, with a strange, but satisfying ending that proves that love (mostly) conquers all.

An Oversimplification of Her Beauty defies categorization, in all the best ways possible.

The first thing to know is that the film isn’t a linear story. It’s a complex and complicated exploration of modern love, an intriguing dance between two characters circling the possibility of a relationship, born out of mutual infatuation. Avant-guarde storytelling in the key of noir, Oversimplification blends animation, live action, and narration to tell the tale of Terence falling in love with Namik. The characters are real people, based on their own lives. Nance earned his spot in the New Frontier section of Sundance – in addition to the innovative, movie-within-a-movie style of storytelling, animation also plays a key role. Exploring his inner emotions through stop-motion figure dolls and beautifully rendered scenes, Nance essentially uses this film as therapy, working out the complicated tangle of his messy romantic life.

Refreshingly, black women are Nance’s muses. Often in cinematic depictions of black love, the relationship is construed as adversarial. Here, as Nance documents the many loves that fit his archetype of “brown, maternal, well read, well traveled,” black women take center stage, his love for each of them palpable through the screen.

But is what he feels for them really love? Nance believes so, and spends most of the film trying to articulate what he loves about Namik, and how his past relationship history lead him to this point of nearly breathless anticipation. The film is ripe with themes for exploration but I will have to leave most of those paths untouched. Nance has created a work so complex, it is almost like recorded performance art. Thus, I agree with Tambay – it needs to be experienced. Hopefully, it finds a distributor because it deserves to be seen and experienced by as many people as possible. Nance’s story is both familiar and strange, and tends to provoke a lot of self-reflection in the audience. Who are we, when we are in love? I’m still mulling over my own answer.

• Young kid from the hood trying to make good? Check.
• Prerequisite positive rap song that feels like it was pulled from Ghostwriter? Check.
• Street pressures that are easily overcome? Check.
• Mandatory plot for women, involving sexing up your image to get signed to the majors? Check.

But hey, I had just gone through three really depressing movies about the fall out of the drug war. I needed something to lift my spirits, and I will shamelessly admit that I enjoyed Brown Sugar. On the real, Filly Brown could have been a Lifetime produced version of the Somaya Reece story, and I still would have watched it!

Luckily, I was wrong.

Okay, on second thought, I wasn’t that wrong. Two and a half of the four I listed above were in the movie. But the team behind Filly Brown managed to add enough new elements to make the standard tropes feel fresh.

Maria Jose “Majo” Tonorio (Gina Rodriguez) is about her business. We meet her in the an LA studio, hungry and ready to get on the mic. Her moniker is “Filly Brown” and her onstage persona is aggressive. Her clothes are made for maximum comfort and street style, and she wasn’t taking any kind of mess. She meets a clownish (yet popular) rapper before one of her sets, and when he grabs her ass, she punches him in the face. (This film is not for pacifists–Majo is quick with her hands, and there is a lot of violence.) Raw and ready, she catches the attention of DJ Santa (Braxton Millz) who unites with her to create a new kind of sound. He believes in her talent, but Majo is under a lot of pressure. Not only is she helping to raise her boy-crazy younger sister and looking after her overworked father, her mother is in jail on drug charges. After being absent for a few years, her mother Maria (Jenn Rivera) reaches out to pressure Majo to finding the money to retry the case.

Her father and uncle will not help her with the money, wary of Maria’s past history, so Majo takes matters into her own hands, leaving the comfort of her close-knit circle and doing whatever it takes to get to the top.

The film flows in two directions–the first, more predictable track is Majo’s journey through hip-hop stardom. The second plot, however, is a bit more compelling. Majo is actually a generation removed from the streets–her father Jose (Lou Diamond Phillips) and her uncle used to live fast and hard, but gave up that life as they grew older. Now as a adults, they’ve struggled to carve out a legal existence. Her father owns a landscaping company with two of his friends from the streets, but they risk losing work when his largest contract believes that the burly, tattooed workers present an undesirable image to her clients. In addition to financial pressures, Jose doesn’t want to tell Majo the extent of her mother’s drug abuse, leading the family lawyer (Edward James Olmos) to threaten to reveal all the family secrets.

The scenes between Majo and her mother at the prison are beautifully acted and heartbreaking–as Majo begins to piece together the web of lies her mother told to further her habit in prison, she becomes angry and resentful. However, her final freestyle to her mother trapped behind the prison glass wrung tears from most of the audience.

Overall, Filly Brown was a hip hop movie with tons of heart and style. It passes the Bechdel test with flying colors, and while it may feel a bit predictable in some parts, Majo is a character worth cheering for.

Writing a good divorce comedy is tougher.

So the fact that Rashida Jones nailed both her performance and her part of the screenplay entire movie is something very special.

Celeste and Jesse Forever follows a long-term couple in the midst of a breakup. Having been best friends for the past twenty years, Celeste (Rashida Jones) and Jesse (Andy Samberg) find themselves divorcing–in spite of their continued chemistry. Celeste, a trends analyst and pop-culture commentator, is the epitome of a responsible business woman. Jesse is an unemployed artist, who spends more time scheming on surfing than actively planning out his life. They bond through some strange shared loves (like masturbating lip glosses, baby corn, and other things that look like tiny penises) but Celeste initiates the divorce since Jesse has failed to grow up.

However, as the proceedings continue, and they actually start experiencing life outside of their bond, both Celeste and Jesse begin to question their initial perceptions of their marriage. The conversations between Jesse and Celeste flow easily, in that goofy style of intimate speech that’s really hard to capture on film. The film shines when it uses Celeste’s job as an endless source of pop culture commentary, from her book Shitgeist to working with manufactured pop princess Riley Banks. There’s even a cameo from internet darling Sarah Haskins. The film is smart and funny – unfortunately, like most comedies with a relationship at the core, it fails the Bechdel Test.

The Hollywood Reporter interviewed Jones about the writing process:

THR: How much is the film autobiographical for the two of you?

Jones: It’s definitely a pastiche for both of us. We talk all the time about relationships and love and what it means and how it changes — what it means to grow up and how that affects the way you love people. We’re kind of obsessed with it! The film is for sure emblematic of a couple relationships I’ve had; some of them romantic and some of them friendships. It definitely reflects my relationship with Will and other guy friends I’ve had from the time I was 15. Definitely a mashup all around.

THR: Relationships that don’t work out offer up a lot of great material to work with as a writer, don’t they?

Jones: Definitely! There’s no better way to process pain than to write. I’ve not had that experience with acting. I mean, you can momentarily get these glimpses of real pain, but it’s nice to really, really process it and get into it and figure out why it hurts so bad; be really honest about it without having it be you talking to the person you want to talk to.

Honesty is a hallmark of the film–while lots of scenes (and Elijah Wood’s entire character) are pushed over the top for comedic effect, the characters get emotionally naked as the divorce proceedings continue. Samberg does a wonderful job in exploring the vulnerability involved with divorce, but Jones manages to capture the essence of a woman without forcing her into stereotype. Celeste isn’t a bitchy, perpetually single career woman–she has her moments, but they don’t define her. The movie never undermines her character to teach her a lesson, and it doesn’t rely on the Hollywood idea of a happy ending to drive the plot home. It isn’t a coming-of-age film–it’s more about surviving adulthood.

From a Racialicious standpoint, I went into the film with no racial expectations. From the trailer, Jones’ character Celeste is in a majority white world, and that’s basically what you get. However, there are racial references that were puzzling. Celeste attends a Halloween party with a white hefty bag secured around her midsection. When people ask, she explains she’s going as “white trash.” But later, after her date plays something like “Zuleisha” in scrabble, she crows “That’s not a word, that’s like my hootchie cousin’s name!” Make of that what you will, readers.

Ultimately, the movie is enjoyable. It isn’t quite first-date fodder due to the subject explored, but would be fun in most other scenarios. And if you want to see it, you’re in luck–the movie is being distributed by Sony, and will hit theaters in summer 2012.

Latoya will have more Sundance Film Festival coverage over the course of the week, but we’d be remiss in not extending congratulations to Ava DuVernay on winning the festival’s Best Director award this past Saturday for her second feature, Middle of Nowhere.

DuVernay made a well-received debut last year with I Will Follow, which she wrote and directed.

Nowhere, which DuVernay also wrote and directed, stars Emayatzy Corinealdias (Akira’s Hip-Hop Shop) a woman trying to keep herself up in the wake of her husband (Omari Hardwick) going to jail, with the emphasis on her own struggles in the outside world, rather than her husband’s jail time.

“It touches the prison wife’s tale,” DuVernay told It’sOnTheGrid’s Jason Scoggins “But really it’s a story about a woman who’s living within a relationship that’s imbalanced, which is something that a lot of women – and a lot of people – know a lot about.”

Like her last film, Nowhere was picked up for distribution by Participant Media and AFFRM (African-American Film Festival Releasing Movement), which DuVernay founded to help African-American independent films get increased limited engagements, so her latest effort should be hitting some more film festivals later this year.

We’ve posted DuVernay’s chat with Scoggins, in which she talks about making Nowhere without telling her clients at her other job (she worked as a publicist before becoming a filmmaker), among other subjects, under the cut.

Co-directed by Palestinian filmmaker Emad Burnat and Israeli activist Guy Davidi, the images in 5 Broken Cameras are beautiful, haunting, and bring about dozens of other questions about the history of the occupation and the tactics around love and resistance. Thanks to their fabulous publicist Eseel, I got to interview Guy and Emad and ask them about their lives, their work, and what they think the future holds for Israel and Palestine.

Emad: It has been a sometimes good experience, a sometimes bad experience. In 2005, when I started to resist with my village, I decided to film to protect myself and to protect the other protests and to show the footage for other people, and to use the footage sometime to prove what is going on. Over the last seven years, [I documented] how what happened in the village affected me, my family, my children, and my friends, week by week. After many years of documenting, I thought that there was a huge story that I have to tell to other people. We decided to construct a documentary from my personal life and personal story. [5 Broken Cameras] is not a political film or just a film about conflict – it’s a film about life, and how the people can survive and how people live, and how kids grow up. For my kids, everyone loves those boys, and I wanted to make for them a good life, I wanted to take care of them, and protect them. I can’t tie them in the house every day, keep them 24 hours in one room. This is our life, like this. I tried to build for them a good life and a good situation. And I wanted to put my life and my experience in the village in one documentary.

Maybe [other people, in other parts of the world] see footage on the news, but they don’t know the reality and they don’t know the life of these people. I hope that this film does make some change, so we can change the life for everyone – in Palestine and Israel.

Guy: I came to Bil’in in early 2005, one of the first Israeli peace activists that came. I was already interested in what was happening in this movement, I wanted be a part of it. My first main motivation is a bit selfish, it wasn’t just to help the movement – it was also for me. Israel is like a ghetto – it is closed, like a bubble, not sensitive to the others. You’re not allowed to go here, not allowed to go there – so I wanted to break that. I wanted to live in a free way. If we live in a free way, we have to confront the shadows – and what happens in the shadow is in Palestine and the settlements.

So I met Emad. He was a very known character from the start, because he was the only cameraman who was basically staying in the village all the time. He became what we say in the film, “the village’s eye.” So we met many times while filming. We didn’t work together until 2009, when Emad approached me to make the film, so we decided to make it as a personal narrative. When I thought in the beginning to make a film on Bil’in, there were many that were similar. We had to have a new and refreshing take and I was happy to find out in the material that we could tell the story in this very intimate and personal way. You could see in the world both the context of the movement and the occupation, and you can have a really intimate family moments.

Guy: First we have to know that there are many kinds of settlements and many kinds of settlers. It is the Israeli machine that is making it move. These are not necessarily ideological settlers going because they want to conquer the land or wipe out Palestinians. They just want to improve their lives. The government is subsidizing the apartments in the West Bank, and using [the people's] financial circumstances to move an agenda forward. Some settlers don’t know what is going on – the way Israel is designed, you can travel through parts and not really know where you are. Some settlers do know what’s going on and don’t care. And then you have a very small minority, a violent minority, the fundamentalist Jews that are creating terror in Palestine. They are small, but noisy and strong. If Israel would like to change its ways, they will have to find a way to root out the fundamentalists, to pull the weeds.

Emad: I think that from the beginning in ’67, the settlements were the Israeli government’s plan to place them on Palestinian territory to confiscate land and bring people from outside to [stabilize] the settlement. If the government wanted to remove it, they could. But I don’t know what’s their problem. The settlers have power – the government helps them, the developers help them, and sometimes they do bad things to their Palestinian neighbors. They are not connected to this land or this area. When you are connected to something you love it, you want to protect it – you wouldn’t cut down the olive trees if you loved the land. Sometimes, settlers come because of the economy, but sometimes it is ideology.

Emad: I think that in our lives are about experiences. Sometimes I lived a quiet life and sometimes I lived in a bad situation. We have to continue our lives, like normal, even if we live under the occupation and bad conditions sometimes. As a father, I have to give my children some hope for the future – we have to live our life in the bad and the good. When we want to go to the sea, we go to the sea, when we have to resist, we have to resist. I wanted to share and show this experience to people who aren’t living this life. So maybe we can touch and reach their minds and their hearts, and create a good life for everyone.

Guy:I don’t want this to sound cold or unfeeling, but I think that suffering has always been with us. It was in the past and it will be in the future. Sometimes you are the victim, some times you are the oppressor. Most of the time you are both in some ways – I may be an oppressor by paying my taxes to Israeli government, and I’m a victim of these systems at the same time. And every one of us is like that. Of course it is important for us to try to change our reality out of responsibility – not blame or pity. What is important is how we carry suffering, and how we deal with it in life. Maybe [Emad] will never see peace and justice and freedom in his life. Maybe his sons will see it, maybe not. But what gives us a kind of liberty and freedom is what we do in our lives. That can bring joy and a sense of power. That’s the challenge we all face in life. I cannot say what we do will or won’t change reality – I can be pessimistic or optimistic, but in the end what’s really important is what everyone is doing in this situation. If everyone will focus on that, change will come faster.

Emad: I think there is something wrong in the system, not just where I live. There are many places in the world where something wrong has happened. You find people who live in peace and people who suffer all over the world. My message for the world and the people who have power, is to just to feel with people who have nothing – give them feeling, create something good for them, try to say something in their life.

Emad halts the interview for a moment to pray.

Guy: That’s complicated. It was a big debate in the village, and definitely with the Israeli peace activists, whether to use the Israeli system at all. Israel thinks it is a democratic country and they have a good law that balances between civil rights and justice and security needs. This is how they see themselves. But on the ground, we see that this system is so far from just plain common sense – we don’t need international courts to know that what is going on is completely unjust. We are not seeing a system that works with justice. It corresponds with political needs. So the activists and the villages are using that system to try to get some [leverage.] But no one is under the illusion that this is justice. Getting back the land isn’t a good result – we may make things better for some people, but this is not a victory, this is not a change. The aim of this movement is some kind of hint for out strength, the idea that we can do much more.

Emad: I think that with the Israeli court, no one in the village believed they would remove the court and the fence from Bil’in land. But after the demonstration and the march, the Army kept saying “why don’t you go to the courts?” The Army told us all the time they have to come here and protect the fence and the security – it is not their decision, they need to change things in court. The Army wanted us to go to court – they wanted to make a political decision, not just to give the people feeling that the protest led to the removal of the wall, they wanted to make it more beautiful – “the Israeli court chose to remove the wall.” At the same time, they use this decision to take another illegal decision for the settlement. That settlement was illegal – so they wanted to make the decision both remove the wall and legalized the settlement.

Guy: So the court is a political instrument. If you have time, you can see The Law in These Parts, about military law and how the law works in occupied territory, with a focus on Israel.

Emad: By the way, the decision to build wall was the decision by the Israeli court. They can’t just make a government decision, the court has to sign off. It’s a huge subject, we could talk about it all day.

Guy: I don’t need to speak about the future of Israel because it is already very bad. The future we have now was put into motion 10 years ago – and what we have now is horrible. We are living in an oppressive, violent society. Our rights are being taken day by day, there are new laws and new legislation targeting human rights organizations and freedom of speech. What is happening right now is worse than before. And what’s stupid about it is that Israel is in one of the best positions to create a wonderful new thing. With Palestine, all the conditions are there. In 10 years, we won’t talk about suicide bombers, because there is a period now where we can change that. But these are opportunities we don’t use and we are building the conditions for more violence. It’s hard to be Israeli in these times, I think because many people that I know, even people who are not politically engaged or didn’t care much for Palestinian issues, they feel that there is something going that is destructive in our society. And because we are so indifferent and numb in an emotional position as Israelis, we are paying for that and we are going to keep paying for that. That’s why I can be optimistic – we’re really at a bottom in our culture.

I cannot estimate how unknown forces and undercurrents will create change. We have a very strong social movement in Israel, last summer, a lot like the Arab Spring. But we don’t know how that will develop.

We’re always speaking about peace and about justice. If we’re speaking about justice we’re already good. In order to have peace, Palestinians have to live with a sense of justice, which is hard, because some things are unfixable. But for Israelis we don’t just need to confront how to create justice in theory, they have to want to heal themselves as a society. I think Israelis and Jews took a moment in their lives to wallow in their past and wallow in fears that are both justified and unjustified. We have to find a way to heal from our fears and from our past. We have to find a way to remove these destructive forces from the inside. That’s why I find the film & Emad an inspiration – he’s a victim of the occupation, but he still makes a beautiful thing out of it. Israelis, with our past and with our history, we couldn’t create a beautiful thing. And that’s very sad.

Emad: The Palestinian people decided to struggle against the occupation to get freedom – so it’s a long time for the Palestinian people and a long time for resistance – 60 years of resistance and struggle against the occupation. The people, they still have hope and think this is the only way they can get freedom – it is through resistance. It is about the future for their boys. I think for everyone who wants to create a new future for his boys, we believe and we have hope that we can do this. The only thing I can say for sure about the Palestinian is future is that no one knows what will happen. We always have hope for the situation and good luck, so we make things like films, so maybe we can affect or do something good for the future. And all of this is part of the resistance. It’s not just to make films, or play games – it’s not easy to make something like in a risky situation. This is what we are doing to create and make a good life in the future, we can do this and succeed. But nobody knows when and nobody knows what is coming up, good or bad. But I think that the Israeli government, they react like this because they didn’t care about creating good situations and a good life or future for Israeli residents. I think they have fear, they think something big will happen, so all they want to do is buy more time. This is not the right way to create a good life for the people. They don’t want to give Palestinians rights or a state, because they think it is an issue of security – if we give them power, in the future they will attack us. So they are always scared.

Guy: These are hard questions. I can say what I wish for Palestine, while thinking that the occupation will stay, and what wishes I have for Palestinians. Unfortunately, I don’t see the occupation retreating. I don’t have any evidence of reversing that process being a possibility – it would be wishful thinking to say otherwise. So what I wish for Palestinians in that situation is to provide inspirational ways to handle this situation, to find ways to get out of their despair and of their misery and their sense of dependence, and their sense of helplessness, and that feeling of helplessness, because I don’t think they are helpless and they don;t have to be victims. The Israelis and the Israeli government are putting them in the role of victims, but they don’t have to play that role in life. When I look at Emad and Bil’in, they chose not to be victims. And to do that in their lives, knowing there may not be change.

I wish that more people would find faith to do that.

“By healing, you resist oppression. – Emad Burnat”

5 Broken Cameras is a story of living in the shadow of oppression, a moving portrait of vibrant resistance through the unapologetic embrace of life itself. Set in the small Palestinian village of Bil’in, the story and narrative belongs to Emad Burnat, who became the eye of the village and ultimately chronicled over five years of activism. The people of Bil’in found their lands being encroached on by the building of a new settlement, and the wall to protect that settlement. They protest peacefully, marching up to the wall each Friday and thinking of new actions and demonstrations to stop the advancement of the settlement.

During this time, Emad also had a son, Gibreel, which brought his total brood to four. Emad mentions that each of the boys knows a slightly different world. The eldest was born during the Olso Accords which meant that he grew up with more freedom and mobility. Gibreel, on the other hand, mixes his first words of “mommy” and “daddy” with “army,” “cartridge” and “run! run!” If it weren’t for the ever present undercurrent of violence, Emad’s life would almost be seen as idyllic: a loving family; a large, involved village; numerous dances and celebrations are cornerstones of the life they create. Their marches are also full of hope and some humor. At one point, tired of the late night raids on the village, a group of children march up to the wall, chanting “We want to sleep! We want to sleep!” The situation in Bil’in gained international attention, and groups of Israeli, German, and other activists come at various points to show their support and solidarity. However, violence is never far enough away, and the promise of more hangs over Bil’in like a cloud.

The documentary is brutal to watch–at various points in the film, I wished it would end, not because I was bored, but because I wanted to stop watching the endless cycle of violence. Outside of the usual tear-gassing and violent treatment of the protestors, other army actions loomed just as large. At one point in the film, the peace activists discover that Israeli special forces have disguised themselves as Palestinians and began creating chaos at a demonstration before hauling people away to be arrested by their comrades at the top of the hill. Another scene shows one of the most outspoken activists, Daba, being isolated by a group of police officers who then calmly and deliberately shoot him in the leg.

Still, through it all, Emad continues filming, even as his cameras are damaged by human hands, stun grenades, and bullets. He questions his role as an impartial journalist the day his brother is arrested, watching his mother and father throw themselves in front of the Army van to try to prevent him from being taken. His work makes him a target, and he is aware of that. But the most devastating part of the document was watching the impact of the events and the violence on Emad’s children.

“Dreaming can be dangerous,” notes Emad. “The only protection I can offer him is letting him see everything.”

(Note: I interviewed Guy & Emad – that interview will be posted later today.)

“Though we tremble before uncertain futures/ may we meet illness, death and adversity with strength/ may we dance in the face of our fears.”
― Gloria E. Anzaldúa

Mosquita y Mari is a slow paced exploration of being a teenager peering over the brink of adulthood. Set in a Mexican-American neighborhood in Los Angeles, Mosquita y Mari follows the lives of two very different Chicana teenagers. Yolanda (Fenessa Pineda) is a studious high-achiever, a dutiful daughter from a loving home. Mari (Venecia Troncoso) is rebellious and volatile, with a chip on her shoulder that crowds out most of the world. Circumstances toss them together again and again, and they embark on a deep and intense friendship.

In her press kit, writer/director Aurora Guerrero writes:

The inspiration behind my debut feature-film, Mosquita y Mari, was my own adolescence. Initially, when I decided I wanted to write a feature-length script I kept coming back to a series of complex, same-sex friendships I had while growing up. When looking back, long before I identified as queer, I realized my first love was one of my best friends. It was the type of friendship that was really tender and sweet but also sexually charged. Despite the fact that we had the makings of a beautiful teen romance we never crossed that line. The beginnings of Mosquita y Mari was reflecting back on that time and asking myself the questions, why didn’t we cross that line and what kept us in “our place”? I didn’t grow up in a household where my parents forewarned me that if I turned out to be gay they would disown me. They didn’t wave the Bible in my face saying it was wrong. Instead the message was subtle. It was hidden in the silences around sex and desire; it was implied in society’s expectations, you know, like you only experience those feelings of love and desire with the opposite sex. I think all of us are subject to society’s rules so I think many people can relate to this story of censored friendship. That was the initial inspiration. [...]

This process of self exploration that I embarked on while writing this script led me to position this budding love story within the immigrant world. The core conflict in the story of Mosquita y Mari isn’t a homophobic parent getting in the way of their experience but rather the pressures that come with surviving as an immigrant or coming from a legacy of self-sacrifice for the sake of family and status in society. In the end, what I ended up writing was a coming of age story where both my protagonists find themselves paving a new path for themselves and their families.

And you know it’s serious when the credits include a thank you to Cherríe L. Moraga and Gloria Anzaldúa.

The movie is in Spanglish, almost as if Guerrero hung this quote on her wall while she was writing:

“Until I am free to write bilingually and to switch codes without having always to translate, while I still have to speak English or Spanish when I would rather speak Spanglish, and as long as I have to accommodate the English speakers rather than having them accommodate me, my tongue will be illegitimate. I will no longer be made to feel ashamed of existing. I will have my voice: Indian, Spanish, white. I will have my serpent’s tongue – my woman’s voice, my sexual voice, my poet’s voice. I will overcome the tradition of silence.”
― Gloria E. Anzaldúa

Interestingly, much of the scenes in MyM are specifically constructed to rely on a teen’s body language to convey how they are feeling. The film is constructed with care – showing the struggles between the two girls to grow into who they will become. For Yolanda (semi-affectionately termed mosquita by Mari), her relentless quest for good grades was becoming less and less satisfying, yet the world of drinking, getting high, and boys offered by her old friends doesn’t appeal to her. She finds a third way in Mari’s “live in the moment style” and soon finds herself navigating that difficult boundary between a passionate friendship and romantic love.

Mari, on the other hand, already has one foot into the adult world. After her father dies, her mother has problems making ends meet. Mari routinely blows off school to try to raise money for the household. Her mother is caught between wanting Mari to focus on school and to make a better life for herself, but the money Mari provides is too important to go without. Mari, bright but full of rage at her impossible circumstances, finds solace in Yolanda’s simplicity and steadfastness but doesn’t always know how to balance their idyllic relationship with the demands of the real world.

Interweaving themes of family, duty, love, and belonging, MyM succeeds in revealing the inner lives of teenage girls. The most devastating parts of the film revolve around the petty betrayals that anyone who has been through adolescence will remember – the betrayals by others, desperately trying to assert their identities, and the scarring betrayals of the self, knowing you are trying to be someone you are not. While the heavy emphasis on hazy, lingering shots may have some viewers wishing to hit fast forward, Guerrero nails the messy inner lives of teenagers for what they are. And unlike 2005′s Wassup Rockers, MyM places the burden of the story squarely on the teenagers telling the tale. As it should be.

So, thanks to a fast talking friend, I ended up in Park City, Utah for the Sundance Film Festival.

I’m warning you now – for actual film coverage and movie reviews, go straight to the pros. Tambay, as always, is holding it down for Shadow and Act, and she’s already got a review up of “Beasts of the Southern Wild,” which is the photo illustrating this post.

I’m trying to fit at least 6 movies into the my time here (along with some interviews and some gate crashing), so here’s what I’m eyeing:

Beasts of the Southern Wild

Hushpuppy, an intrepid six-year-old girl, lives with her father, Wink, in “the Bathtub,” a southern Delta community at the edge of the world. Wink’s tough love prepares her for the unraveling of the universe; for a time when he’s no longer there to protect her. When Wink contracts a mysterious illness, nature flies out of whack—temperatures rise, and the ice caps melt, unleashing an army of prehistoric creatures called aurochs. With the waters rising, the aurochs coming, and Wink’s health fading, Hushpuppy goes in search of her lost mother.

The Words
Starring: Zoe Saldana, Bradley Cooper

Rory Jansen, a struggling writer, aspires to be the next great literary voice. When he discovers a lost manuscript in a weathered attaché case, he realizes he possesses something extraordinary that he desperately wishes he had created. Rory decides to pass the work off as his own and finally receives the recognition he desperately craves. However, he soon learns that living with his choice will not be as easy as he thought as he faces a moral dilemma that will make him take a hard look at the man he has become.

Majo” Tonorio, a.k.a. Filly Brown, is a raw, young Los Angeles hip-hop artist who spits from the heart. When a sleazy record producer offers her a crack at rap stardom, Majo faces some daunting choices. With an incarcerated mother, a record contract could be the ticket out for her struggling family. But taking the deal means selling out her talent and the true friends who helped her to the cusp of success.

Woody, an adorable 11-year-old boy awaiting the return of his missing mother, lives with his grandmother and Uncle Vincent, who is fresh off an eight-year prison stint. For Woody, the confident, charismatic Vincent is a titan among men. When Vincent notices that Woody could learn a thing or two about becoming a man, he brings him along as he ventures forth to open his own business. But when legit life fails to support Vincent’s vision, and his old Baltimore crime boss, Mr. Fish, haunts him, the pace of little Woody’s manhood lesson accelerates.

What happens when love takes you places you never thought you would go? When her husband, Derek, is sentenced to eight years in a California prison, Ruby drops out of medical school to maintain her marriage and focus on ensuring Derek’s survival in his violent new environment. Driven by love, loyalty, and hope, Ruby learns to sustain the shame, separation, guilt, and grief that a prison wife must bear. Her new life challenges her to the very core of her identity, and her turbulent path propels her in new, often frightening directions of self-discovery.

Detroit’s story has encapsulated the iconic narrative of America over the last century— the Great Migration of African Americans escaping Jim Crow; the rise of manufacturing and the middle class; the love affair with automobiles; the flowering of the American dream; and now . . . the collapse of the economy and the fading American mythos.

With its vivid, painterly palette and haunting score, DETROPIA sculpts a dreamlike collage of a grand city teetering on the brink of dissolution.

Ai Weiwei is known for many things—great architecture, subversive in-your-face art, and political activism. He has also called for greater transparency on the part of the Chinese state. Director Alison Klayman chronicles the complexities of Ai’s life for three years, beginning with his rise to public prominence via blog and Twitter after he questioned the deaths of more than 5,000 students in the 2008 Sichuan earthquake. The record continues through his widely publicized arrest in Beijing in April of 2011. As Ai prepares various works of art for major international exhibitions, his activism heats up, and his run-ins with China’s authorities become more and more frequent.

Fourteen-year-old Mo is a lonely, sensitive boy whose hunger for the rant and banter of buddies makes him prone to tread dangerous territories. He idolizes his handsome older brother, Rashid, a charismatic, well-respected member of a local gang, whose drug dealing enables “Rash” to provide for his family. Aching to be seen as a tough guy himself, Mo takes a job that unlocks a fateful turn of events and forces the brothers to confront their inner demons. It turns out that hate is easy. It is love and understanding that take real courage.

Rodriguez was the greatest ’70s U.S. rock icon who never was. His albums were critically well-received, but sales bombed, and he faded away into obscurity among rumors of a gruesome death. However, as fate would have it, a bootleg copy of his record made its way to South Africa, where his music became a phenomenal success. In a country suppressed by apartheid, his antiestablishment message connected with the people.

Marion and Mingus live cozily—perhaps too cozily—with their cat and two young children from previous relationships. However, when Marion’s jolly father (played by director Delpy’s real-life dad), her oversexed sister, and her sister’s outrageous boyfriend unceremoniously descend upon them for a visit, it initiates two unforgettable days that will test Marion and Mingus’s relationship. With their unwitting racism and sexual frankness, the French triumvirate hilariously has no boundaries or filters . . . and no person is left unscathed in its wake.

Celeste and Jesse met in high school and got married young. They laugh at the same jokes and finish each other’s sentences. They are forever linked in their friends’ minds as the perfect couple—she, a high-powered businesswoman and budding novelist; he, a free spirit who keeps things from getting boring. Their only problem is that they have decided to get divorced. Can their perfect relationship withstand this minor setback?

With this auspicious feature film debut, Aurora Guerrero explores the complexities of a budding friendship between two Chicana high schoolers in Los Angeles’s Huntington Park. Yolanda is stellar in her studies and makes her parents proud, while Mari has just moved to town with her undocumented family. On her first day of school, Mari is assigned to be Yolanda’s study partner. After a rocky start, the two find a bond that confuses them at times. Guerrero’s steady direction allows more intimate understanding of the girls’ aspirations and their families’ expectations.

I’m also heading over to the New Frontier Section, which is the interactive exhibits.

I’m checking out:

Hunger in Los Angeles
Question Bridge: Black Males

And other films that look good, but I probably won’t have time to catch:

Finding North - A documentary on hunger, focusing on the working poor
The House I Live In – On the cost of the War on Drugs
The Invisible War – On rape in the armed forces
Slavery By Another Name – On the ways in which slavery “persisted as a practice many decades after its supposed abolition.”
We’re Not Broke – On corporations exploiting loopholes in tax law
1/2 Revolution – video camera testimony from Egypt’s uprising in 2011
5 Broken Cameras – A Palestinian and Israeli co-production exploring the escalation of violence around the settlements
Payback – A cinematic exploration of the themes in Margaret Atwood’s book of essays.
Something From Nothing: The Art of Rap – Ice-T’s documentary on rap music

Also, there’s an alternate festival called Slamdance, which has a Stan Lee doc. How many hours are in the day again?

Update:

It is ticket war out this piece. Apparently, there’s a magic red pass where you can just roll into whatever you want, but I am not cool/prestigious enough to get one. In my hand I have tix for: “Luv”, “Filly Brown,” “5 Broken Cameras,” and “The House I Live In.” I think I can buy a ticket to “Celeste and Jesse.” I’ve got a request in for “Searching for Sugar Man.” And I need to get in line tomorrow to request “2 Days in New York” for Saturday. I’m going to try to catch “Slavery by Another Name” and “Mosquita y Mari” in the screening rooms, though those are first come first serve. Wish me luck, y’all. – LDP

By Arturo R. García

The Mixed Roots Film & Literary Festival contacted us with the heads-up: the submission period has opened for this year’s event, scheduled to run June 16-17 at the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles.

There is no submission fee for entries sent before Feb. 15, but entries submitted between Feb. 16 and March 15 must be accompanied by a $50 fee. We’ve got information on each category, and links to the required submissions forms, under the cut.

Film Submissions

• Subject matter may include but is not limited to: interracial/cultural relationships, transracial/cultural adoption and the exploration of multiracial/cultural identity.
• Please note that there may be a Q&A session at each screening of the Festival on June 16 or 17, though participation is not mandatory.
• Participants are responsible for their own transportation and lodging. The festival is unable to provide an honorarium. (This applies to all categories.)

Performance Submissions

• Open to comics, actors, musicians, and spoken word artists with self-contained, portable acts suitable to a black box theatre.
• Submissions must be complete and run under five minutes. (Performers must be off-book.)
• Performers must be available for both a mandatory rehearsal on June 15 and a performance during the festival.
• No props or furniture will be provided.

Literary Submissions

• Besides filling out the submissions form above, applicants must send a 10-15 page writing sample and a high res jpeg photo of themselves as attachments to mxrootsfest@gmail.com with “Literary” and the applicant’s name in the subject line.
• Participants must be available to read from their works during the festival.

Workshop Submissions

These submissions may address only one of the following:

1. Creation of literary content
2. Creation of film content
3. Providing a historical context for inclusion in film/literary content.

• All presenters’ attendance must be confirmed by applicants at the time of submission.
• Presenters are expected to arrive at the Festival site no later than 45 minutes prior to the scheduled workshop time.

By Sexual Correspondent Andrea (AJ) Plaid

I saw Shame a couple of weeks ago with my homie Sarah Jaffe…and, on the real, I wanted to check out the flick because I wanted to see Michael Fassbender’s full frontal nudity. (And, considering how quick the box-office attendant was asking for photo IDs for this NC-17 flick, I guess quite a few under-17 others were trying to see the younger Magneto’s full frontal nudity, too.)

MAJOR SPOILER ALERT after the jump.

Synopsis: Fassbender plays Brandon, a white, handsome, successful office-working something-or-other (the film never states what he does for a living or where he works) living the upscale–and rather white–NYC life.  Brandon also has a sexual addiction, which McQueen frames as Brandon lacking any emotional connections and/or the ability to go about forming healthy ones–even with his own sister–in tandem with a series of sexual behaviors: Brandon inviting and paying female sex workers of various races and ethnicities; constantly masturbating (you first see him jerking off in his shower, and later he’s shown doing it in his office bathroom; and his sister catches him jerking off in a toilet); getting paranoid about the IT department talking about his hard drive, only to have his boss call him into the office about the porn found on it (though the boss blames Brandon’s intern for it, not Brandon); hooking up with a white woman at a bar that his married boss initially tried to pick up; his picking up another white woman at a random bar and, after some consensual fingering, puts his fingers under her white boyfriend’s nose to sniff (which leads to the boyfriend assaulting Brandon); after the assault, Brandon following a racially ambiguous male sex worker into the backroom of a gay bar, where he kisses the sex worker and gets a blowjob; participating in a threesome with two female sex workers, portrayed by white burlesquer DeeDee Luxe and Asian burlesque star Calamity Chang (both links NSFW).

When Brandon attempts to form a healthy romantic connection–after his sister busts him masturbating into the toilet–he throws out his massive porn collection and a couple of sex toys and approaches Marianne (American Violet‘s Nicole Beharie), who works at his office. She is one of the few Black people (let alone people of color) at the firm. They go on a date:

Then Brandon invites Marianne for an afternoon tryst at a hotel. Hepped up on a line of cocaine and the sheer excitement at this opportunity to prove he’s conquered his sexual addiction by himself, Marianne and he engage in some foreplay, only for Brandon not be able to get erect. Ashamed, he sends Marianne away and later has penetrative sex with a sex worker, a white woman, in the same room.

All of this is to give context to this radio interview excerpt between film critic Elvis Mitchell and McQueen. Towards the end of the interview, McQueen says this about casting Beharie as Brandon’s love interest (unfortunately, KCRW doesn’t have a full transcript of the interview):

Elvis Mitchell: I found interesting, too…there are women in the film and the way you sort of develop what the women do from Brandon. They really are fleshly in a way that he is not. I mean, they’re sort of in touch with their bodies in terms of living in the world in a way he is not: both his sister and the woman he courts at the office want to use their bodies for a different thing than he does.

Steve McQueen: …of course, Marianne–she, of course, is played by Nicole Beharie–I like Marianne. She’s sort of willing to try to make something out of something, which may not be a good thing to do. But she wants to take a chance.

EM: She’s also the grown-up in the movie. She represents looking for a future, which neither Brandon or Sissy are capable of doing. They’re both about the immediate. I felt it was interesting to make the one African American woman in the movie, the one person of color, [as] the person looking for a future rather than trying to find a momentary satisfaction. Even [Brandon's] boss is like that–a person who wants to be immediately gratified.

SM: That’s interesting. [Laughs] I mean, other people saying to me when I came to America and I wanted to cast [Beharie]. Because when I came to research the movie, of all the people but for this one guy–I think he was from somewhere in South America–were white who were dealing with sex addiction. I suppose it’s a different kind of situation, I’d imagine, where you’d find one kind of ethnicity. But I found it fascinating.

But when it came to the workplace it was as you see it. It was one Black person. It was like, “Wow, that’s kind of interesting.” And this girl could be Brandon’s girlfriend. But what was interesting was there was all kinds of  objections about this, of saying, “Oh, that wouldn’t happen there. That wouldn’t exist.” I said, “What, I don’t exist?” It was a very odd thing, having these conversations about having a love interest that was a Black woman with Brandon. It was interesting, that. It was fascinating, that.

But then, what also fascinates me is you have a lot of white American filmmakers who never cast a Black person in their movies and they made quite a few movies. How can you avoid that? That’s kind of weird. It’s like walking around with blindfolds on. How can you make movies in this country–and consistently make movies–and not cast Black characters in the main leads? I mean, I made two movies–and they’re art films–and the feature film are 90 percent white and my art films are 90 percent Black. There’s no distinguishing the two; it’s just one thing–it’s not “art” or “film.” That’s how it is.

EM: I waited fifty years for someone to say that.

What Sarah and I chatted about over post-movie brunch is that we really appreciated McQueen’s decision to cast Beharie as Brandon’s love interest. As Mitchell observes, Marianne is an adult, a woman with her own relationship loose ends (she tells Brandon she’s separated, not divorced) and healthy sexual curiosity and appetite (she agrees to the tryst; she eagerly and sensuously kiss Brandon back as they’re hiding behind a patterned glass partition at the office). Brandon knows, regardless of his condition, he has to come correct with Marianne; his frozen face as he watches her through the window of the restaurant of their first date displays his terror. Even in the above clip, Marianne holds her own flirting with Brandon. More importantly, Marianne and Brandon are drawn to each other in the film because they’re interested in each other, not as a Very Special Episode of Interracial Dating in America. Unfortunately, their relationship is a very short one due to Brandon’s addiction — and you never see Marianne again after she leaves the hotel.

Yet, Sarah and I gave gasface to McQueen framing Brandon having sex with another man and a three-way to signify Brandon “hitting rock bottom.” Why, we rhetorically asked, does homosexuality and consensual multiple partners — neither of which are really respected in US society — have to be the film’s shorthand for “sexual depravity”? McQueen could have shown Brandon’s nadir when the boyfriend assaulted him. To show Brandon engaged with the partners as a sign his utter debasement smells of homophobia and anti-polyamory.

Is Shame worth seeing? If the frisson of finally seeing an NC-17 film (“Woohoo! Grown-ass flick!”) making it to your movie theater is worth the price of admission, then … well, maybe. But, like all frissons, it won’t last long. If you want to see an interracial couple that’s a couple and not a Big Social Statement a la Something New, then…well, maybe. The relationship is short-lived. But just to see Michael Fassbender’s penis? You’ll be wildly disappointed because you’re not going to see it for very long at all.

H/t to Shadow and Act

Photo credit: Filmofilia

By Guest Contributor Spectra

Wait a minute, not all lesbians in movies are white, rich or middle-class with no bills to pay? You mean “life” doesn’t get put on pause so that all gay people can experience the thrill of coming out at summer camp? And, there are other LGBT issues worth talking about besides marriage? Gasp! And Hallelujah for Spike Lee protégé Dee Rees’ Pariah, a film women of color (and other marginalized groups) can truly relate to.

On the surface, Pariah is a coming of age story about an African-American lesbian, Alike (pronounced “Ah-LEE-kay”) in Brooklyn. But dig deeper, and you’ll see a smart and layered tackling of gender, sexuality, religion, and even class — an essential layer of complexity needed to accurately portray the diverse experiences of queer people of color, long been absent from mainstream LGBT films. Rather than depicting homophobia as the only kind of oppression experienced by the LGBT community, Pariah’s world is a varied socio-cultural landscape in motion featuring an all-POC cast, led by Nigerian actress Adepero Oduye’s performance as 17-year old Alike.

Pariah’s urban setting almost eliminates the need to discuss race at all (or, as in popular case of experiencing race through white characters, explain it). The audience is plopped, un-apologetically, right in the middle of a story filled with black characters, making way for intersectional observations about class and gender roles within the story’s cultural context.

SPOILERS UNDER THE CUT

The film opens with an unfocused, low-level street shots of baggy jeans, dangling belt chains, hard-soled shoes, and the dirty streets of Brooklyn. We hear the sound of women socializing, and then some unexpected song lyrics: All you ladies pop your p-ssy like this. We’re immediately placed in the scene of a nightclub, in front of a stripper who is somehow managing to slide up the pole, and slapped in the face by Rees’ over-the-top interpretation of coming of age as a young lesbian of color: loud club music, a hyper-sexualized social environment, a group of tomboys (“studs”, “butches”, “aggressives”) throwing money at a stripper in a bothersome (yet, admittedly, amusing) re-enactment of heterosexual masculinity, while a small voice in our heads may be wondering if we’re supposed to be down with all of this.

But just as we are beginning to question what we’re doing in the theater, we meet Alike and see that her world is upside down, too, literally. The frame is rotated upright to reveal a slender Alike, dressed awkwardly in a wide-striped, oversized polo, black do-rag, and fitted lid, staring at the pulsating pelvis of the stripper, and doing so with a confused, yet curious expression on her face.

Her discomfort is made even more apparent when we meet her best friend, Laura (Pernell Walker), a huskier and much more aggressive tomboy (who claims to “get more p-ssy than yo’ daddy”), acting as Alike’s enthusiastic chaperone in this bizarre rite of passage. Clad in a dressed in a red lid and popped-collar track jacket, Laura embodies masculinity more confidently; after she finally gives up trying to get Alike to talk to “get that punani“, she proceeds to grind with a heteronormatively feminine (“high femme”) black lesbian in a gender-polarized mating dance.

For her part, as Alike heads home on the bus alone, we see her vulnerability exposed under fluorescent lights: she begins to slowly strip herself of the masculine lesbian identity she’s hiding from her family. She pulls back the lid and do-rag to put her natural hair (twisties) in a ponytail, takes off the over-sized polo to reveal a fitted tank top hidden underneath, and finally, puts a pair of earrings back in a heart-breaking act of gender conformity.

Despite the nuanced depiction of gender and class, Pariah doesn’t hit us over the head with analysis: the characters don’t explain why they each dress differently (urban streetwear to preppy to chic, and more), why they are of different financial circumstances, or why their accents are different; they just are. Alike, for instance, is evidently a “softer” tomboy as described by some girls at her high school. She’s also an aspiring writer, and (most likely due to the part of the city in which she was raised) has very different diction from Laura, whose vernacular is filled with slang, curse words, and the N-word as a term of endearment. In turn, Laura’s friends behave in a manner that’s very similar to cisgendered masculinity: they wear all men’s clothing, drink beer, play poker, and (of course) have beautiful girls sit on their laps as trophies. Yes, lesbians can be sexist too, but Dee Rees’ thoughtful character development steers the screenplay away from the danger of telling a single story.

In the past, the dominant movie narrative that existed for lesbians on screen presented, for many, depicted an unrealistic social context: all lesbians are white and heteronormatively feminine (AKA “lipstick lesbians” like Gina Gershon and Jennifer Tilly in Bound), they have sex by making a performance of moaning the same way the women in straight porno films do (too many to name, but the most annoying sex scene for me comes from indie flick Chloe — an extended makeout session, really?). Meanwhile, no one seems to have any money problems as they can throw huge weddings they don’t even show up to (Imagine Me and You, the infamous L Word non-wedding) and 2-dimensional side characters with no real lives of their own, exist simply to react (whether negatively or positively) to the “lesbian” issue (a la the saintly and unfortunate husband archetype in The Hours).

In many of these films, homophobia (besides the expected relationship drama) was often presented as the singular obstacle to the main characters’ happiness. Thus, the combination of the aforementioned archetypal elements and the perpetuation of single-issue hurdles for LGBT characters, for me, wove together a series of feel-good lezzie flicks that all said the same thing: “Please leave these two pretty and privileged white girls who just want to fall in love and live happily ever after in their color-blind world (which, by the way, contains no people of color) alone, okay?”

Considering what the film industry was like even just a decade ago, most people would concede that in the face of Hollywood’s focus on hegemonic straight relationships, movies that featured gay or lesbian characters at all were pushing the envelope. Indeed, many of us queer women were thrilled when The L Word came out. After all, it was on Showtime — widely accessible to our straight friends, who we eagerly organized viewing parties with so we could watch them experience what our lives as lesbians were like, sort of.

We didn’t all wear high heels and runway dresses; the lesbians at the clubs I went to certainly didn’t sport that level of Hollywood glam. Many of us were puzzled by the main characters’ financial means to spend lavish amounts of money eating out at fancy restaurants, throwing parties in LA mansions, and getting married, but we tuned in every week to follow the lives of a group of rich white feminine lesbians, because there weren’t any other alternatives, and sitting through a film with gay characters was a sure way to test a reaction from your friends before you came out. The false sense of reality gave us hope that if we were to come out to our friends, decided to live our lives openly as gay people, life would remain relatively normal. We’d have girlfriends, get married (that’s what all gay people want to do, right?), adopt children, experience the occasional awkward family dinner, but ultimately, live happily ever after.

This is what sets Pariah apart from (white) singular-narrative LGBT films; it debunks the myth that life begins and ends between the point of self-acceptance, and a wedding.

The movie’s skillful orchestration of empathic story-telling and strong performances enables us to move beyond the scope of Gay and Lesbian 101 to tackle other kinds of oppression, including the further marginalization of LGBT people of color. Alike’s family lives comfortably, allowing her to spend most of her time socializing and pursuing her interest in the arts. But Laura, who is the same age as Alike, was forced to drop out of high school when her mother kicked her out, and works overtime to help her sister (who she lives with) pay the bills while studying for her GED. Through Laura’s narrative, the audience is given a glimpse into the experience of many LGBT youths, who are forced to seek refuge and community outside of their families, who risk being homeless for being themselves, yet, must keep on.

It’s a sad observation, but then again isn’t it high time that gay films which grab major distributor attention do more than just perpetuate extremely tragic or fairytale conclusions to a now-engaged and curious public, and present LGBT stories in all their diverse manifestations, which does include the narratives of people of color, working class people, homeless youth, and sometimes, people who are all of the above? It’s not wonder that Pariah — along with peer releases Circumstance and Gunhill Road — has received critical acclaim for its much-needed exploration of LGBT people of color living life at the intersection of many types of oppression.

But don’t get it twisted. Pariah is definitely not a sob story. In fact, the movie is filled with timely and endearing moments of humor and awkwardness that make the hold-no-punches backdrop easier to swallow; the familiar sibling banter that ensues when Alike’s younger (and brattier) sister threatens to tell on her for having a “gross” flesh-colored dildo, a cringe-ful dinner table scene during which her parents describe how they “hung out on prom night”, and Alike’s frequent and ill-timed giggles spells whenever she’s around the girl she likes. The film’s strong undercurrent of family and relationships guarantees that there is something in it for everyone (no need to fear the discomfort of watching a lesbian sex scene with your parents either — she keeps it PG).

Dee Rees has created a motion picture that the larger LGBT community can be proud of, and in which people of color can see themselves carefully and sensitively projected. She may be the black lesbian Tyler Perry (in a good way). Let’s hope we see more of her.

By Arturo R. García

You might want to keep an eye out at your local arthouse theaters around March 9, when Jiro Dreams of Sushi is scheduled for release.

As the trailer above begins, David Gelb’s documentary would seem to deal with master chef Jiro Ono, who has developed his 10-seat restaurant, Sukiyabashi Jiro, into a $300-a-plate hot ticket. But this extended trailer clues us in on a deeper story: when will Jiro finally hang up his knife? And can his son, Yoshikazu, possibly live up to Jiro’s legacy?

I really, really wanted to like CNN’s Black in America 4: The New Promised Land: Silicon Valley (which premiered last night) as well as Miss Representation, a documentary currently airing on OWN. Both, however, left me feeling the same way, which looks something like this:

A couple of synopses before I state why I felt this way:

Black in America 4 explores the rarely discussed facts and stories of Black people in digital technology, especially those who are inventors, innovators, and entrepreneurs. Host Soledad O’Brien frames this through the stories of eight African American entrepreneurs who move into together as part of digital business owners Angela Benton’s and Wayne Sutton’s NewME Accelerator program, which provides Black entrepreneurs time and (relative) quiet space—and possible connections with venture capitalists—for their business ideas.

Jennifer Siebel Newsom’s Miss Representation connects some of the dots between the stats, the personal stories, and media images about women and how those images affect not only those in the media— Margaret Cho recounts the fatphobia and other drama around her 1994 comedy All American Girl — but also those consuming the media, meaning the rest of us.

Now, I know that both shows are, respectively, very much Black Studies and Women’s Studies 101, presented as and for those who may know very little to nothing about either Black tech innovators and owners or media literacy and feminism. So, I can see both try to provide a “hook” for their audiences with that in mind. However, the way their respective creative teams frame their stories does both topics a disservice.

When I asked O’Brien about the aim of this installment at a preview screening, she said, “First of all, [Blacks] are clearly using the technology, but we’re not innovating the technology. And Silicon Valley keeps saying how colorblind it is. So, this part of the series examines that statement.”

Watching BiA4, I felt like I was watching O’Brien trying to mash a news report with a reality show. (“Watch what happens when tech-y Black folks get real…with Soledad O’Brien!”) I can understand that the NewME Accelerator was a good (and, from a seeing-news-as-a-business standpoint, a fiscally feasible way) for CNN to gather a group of Black tech business owners (and the non-Black people who attempt to help and/or comment on them) to tell a relatable narrative about the dearth of Black people in the field.  (BiA4 states early on that less than 1% of digital entrepreneurs are Black. The majority, it says, are white, young, Ivy League and first-tier university drop-outs, which, as pointed out in the post-screening Q&A screening I attended, is a privilege unto itself as far as starting businesses.) But I actually think a better way to tell both stories is to decouple them. If I could reconstruct the story, I would have had O’Brien, say, follow one or two Black digital entrepreneurs in depth as they attempted to get investors and utilized Benton and Sutton as pundits— along with angel investor/philanthropist Mitch Kapor, who directly refutes Michael Arrington’s claim of the digital ownership as “meritorious.” Or I would have followed the NewME Accelerator crew as the main subjects of a full-length documentary to air on CNN.

Also, another questionable point is how Asians and Asian Americans are considered in this report. The show starts off by saying that the tech-innovation worlds are “white and Asian.” Though the presence of Asians and Asian Americans should not lead to Arrington’s erroneous conclusion that the tech world is, therefore, “colorblind,” the presence of Asian and Asian Americans shouldn’t be discounted as failing to bring racial diversity to tech communities. The more subtle equation BiA4 makes, however, is “Black=racial diversity.”

At least BiA4 addresses, albeit imperfectly, race and racism in the tech field, Miss Representation — for all of the visually racial diversity (you see Cho, former Secretary of State Condeleeza Rice, Dreamworlds director Sut Jhally, media-literacy advocate Malkia Cyril, and Newark, NJ mayor Cory Booker, among others) — fails to talk about the issue of race and racism. When I asked why at a post-screening Q&A, the response was “We only had 90 minutes, though we’re planning a second movie to deal with race.” (Refer to image at top of this post.)

However, there were places in the film where race and racism could be mentioned, and it would have taken about 30 seconds. For example, a young Black woman talks about her hair and how media images make her feel about it. The narrator could easily say something like, “Far too many images we see in the media are of white women swinging long, flowing hair. Imagine how that would make a woman of color, whose hair may not do that, feel?”

I timed it: the quote took all of 15 seconds to read out loud. (I’ll be generous and give it about 30 seconds to account for dramatic voiceover.) Or even acknowledge that the majority of media images—both in the film and in entertainment itself, from news to shows to porn—are mostly of white women as both idealized and in variety of roles…and these are, quite a bit of the time, functioning in tandem. Again, all of a thirty-second voiceover or a statistic that could be one of many the film uses to further its argument on how the media hurts women and other people. The silence about race (actress Rosario Dawson is the only person who explicitly mentions “people of color”) — as well as class, gender identity, sexual identity, and  and physical ability, though the film does give a nod at how the media, especially television, fails to acknowledge women above the age of 35 as an audience or as characters — flattens the documentary’s discussion about women to the category of “woman,” as if female-presenting people all suffer from media images the same way. Of course, we don’t.

And I just quite can’t with Black in America 4 and Miss Representation.

Image credit: Bossip

Movie theaters used to hold a special kind of magic.

Lined up with my friends, clutching the occasional purchase of popcorn and a soft drink, or sneaking smuggled in snacks, we would watch in awe and horror as teenagers paraded around on screen, seemingly oblivious to the threat of violence lurking around the corner. When I was about thirteen years old, I sat through the original Scream. The rules of horror movies, as articulated by the character Randy, were clear and concise:

Randy: There are certain RULES that one must abide by in order to successfully survive a horror movie. For instance, number one: you can never have sex.
[crowd boos]
Randy: BIG NO NO! BIG NO NO! Sex equals death, okay? Number two: you can never drink or do drugs.
[crowd cheers and raises their bottles]
Randy: The sin factor! It’s a sin. It’s an extension of number one. And number three: never, ever, ever under any circumstances say, “I’ll be right back.” Because you won’t be back.

But there were some rules that we knew that never were articulated.

1. The black character always dies, normally first. This is normally related to not being lead characters, but easily dispensable side characters. Sure, we had Tales from the Hood, but we knew the score. I think that’s why all of us at the local participatory theater screamed the whole way through I Still Know What You Did Last Summer. “Run, Brandy, Run! You gotta make it because they already killed Mekhi!”

2. Upper middle class white kids are the stars of these things. In general, no matter how big and bad the villain is, they are still hanging out in pastoral campgrounds or tony neighborhoods, waiting for their victims to sun themselves on their cabanas. The only exception I can think of was Candyman who was black and haunted the Cabrini-Green housing projects. And later, came a few other things we need not name. But in general, horror film villains and heroes alike were in the providence of “not us.”

So when Moses and his crew took to the screen, defending their tower block from alien invasion, my inner fourteen year old wanted to jump up and start yelling.

Unfortunately, my 28 year old self knows we don’t do those things at the Museum of Modern Art, even if we really, really, want to.

[Some light spoilers ahead.]

We’ve already posted Emma’s review of Attack the Block (see here) and Kartina’s analysis of the race in the film (see here) so I won’t rehash already covered territory. Instead, we will talk about the interesting racial subtext director Joe Cornish inserted into the film.

I was fortunate enough to catch the film with a special treat: Joe Cornish was there, along with Luke Treadaway, to discuss the film after the screening. If you didn’t play the trailer above, watch for the first title screen, which reads: “The deadliest species in the galaxy” before cutting to a shot of the kids. Cornish created the film specifically as a reaction to other films that showed those people and that environment on a pessimistic way.  Cornish grew up near tower blocks, noting that they were erected after London was bombed (commonly referred to as The Blitz) in World War II. This appears to have influenced his perception of events as he reserves no sympathy for the press, who often demonize the people living in the tower blocks.

The opening scene, which establishes Moses (amazingly played by John Boyega) as an anti-hero, shows the crew robbing a young white woman. Cornish said he pulled the scenario straight out of real life: he was mugged by a group of teens. But, he explained, “Instead of being frightened, it fascinated me.” So from the start, Cornish aims to reverse the viewers thinking – to start with that act of robbery, allow all the attendant thoughts, emotions, and stereotypes to creep in, and then peel back the layers to expose the teens humanity.

Delectably low-budget feeling, Cornish pointed out that the film was influenced by older American cult classics like The Warriors, The Outsiders, Gremlins, The Goonies, Over the Edge, Predator, and ET. (“I see it as a complete flip of ET,” Cornish emphasized.)

Cornish continued, explaining “You can watch horror as genre movies or as political movies.” He give a nod to Romero’s Night of the Living Dead for the craftily included racial subtext and reveals one of his own: The idea for the design of the alien forms was to take what the press wrote about lower-class kids – feral, dark, unthinking – and physically embody it as the monsters they fight.

It was a joy to listen to Cornish – he explained everything from the awesome soundtrack (by one of my favorite groups, Basement Jaxx, and with overall director by Steven Price, who last scored Scott Pilgrim) to the symbolism behind the names. In response to an audience question, Cornish explains Moses and the theme of redemption. “Subtle, wasn’t it,” he starts, also noting that he liked the extra flourish of the idea of the naming, and thinking of the hopes that the parent had for the child they would name after such a strong religious figure. “It might be a bit heavy with the biblical stuff, but fuck it, I liked it,” he concludes.

He also dropped another Easter egg, explaining that many times, cost plays a major role in what is shown in the film. He indicated he had “an amazing, Errol Flynn style fight with Moses climbing up the balcony and fighting the aliens,” but it was too costly. He notes that sometimes, though, innovation comes from brokeness, pointing to George Lucas’ iconic Death Star as something amazing that resulted from a budget issue.

At one point, I wanted to ask a question – after being so amazingly frank on issues of race and stereotypes, how was Cornish going from a project like Attack the Block to a reboot of Tintin? After I identify myself, Cornish reveals he’s actually read some of our commentary (!) and explains that Tintin is a complex character. He notes Tintin was written from 1929 to the 1980s.  Hergé later regretted some of what he wrote; Cornish points out the most controversial title (Tintin in the Congo) is still popular in Africa. He also explains that Tintin as a character has evolved; Tintin is a pacifist by the final book, so evolution is built into the text. The movie is based on the 9th book.

As I departed, a reader named Keisha caught up to me in the hallway. We talked a bit about the film and she asked a question that I had wished I’d thought of – since the film was well-received in the UK, did the riots change that perception? It’s a question we will have to find the answer to, perhaps another time. Cornish has hinted at a possible sequel (with ideas supplied by Boyega), but the jury is still out.

Since we’ve all become huge fans of the film on Racialicious, some of the folks involved in the promotion have offered us a giveaway – one lucky reader will win a free DVD copy of the film, and one runner up will win the theatrical poster. To win, give us your best idea for what should happen in the sequel OR what they should do (or should not do) with an American remake. 300 words max, in the comments to this post, winner selected Friday. If you are not selected, don’t worry – Attack the Block is out on DVD today!

There have been thousands of words written about Stockett’s skills, her portrayal of the black women versus the white women, her right to tell this story at all. I won’t rehash those arguments, except to say that I found the novel fast-paced but highly problematic. Even more troubling, though, is how the structure of narratives like The Help underscores the failure of pop culture to acknowledge a central truth: Within the civil rights movement, white people were the help.

The architects, visionaries, prime movers, and most of the on-the-ground laborers of the civil rights movement were African-American. Many white Americans stood beside them, and some even died beside them, but it was not their fight — and more important, it was not their idea.

This isn’t the first time the civil rights movement has been framed this way fictionally, especially on film. Most Hollywood civil rights movies feature white characters in central, sometimes nearly solo, roles. My favorite (not!) is Alan Parker’s Mississippi Burning, which gives us two white FBI agents as heroes of the movement. FBI agents! Given that J. Edgar Hoover did everything short of shoot Martin Luther King Jr. himself in order to damage or discredit the movement, that goes from troubling to appalling.

Why is it ever thus? Suffice it to say that these stories are more likely to get the green light and to have more popular appeal (and often acclaim) if they have white characters up front. That’s a shame. The continued impulse to reduce the black women and men of the civil rights movement to bit players in the most extraordinary step toward justice that this nation has ever known is infuriating, to say the least. Minny and Aibileen are heroines, but they didn’t need Skeeter to guide them to the light. They fought their way out of the darkness on their own — and they brought the nation with them.

–Martha Southgate, The Truth about the Civil Rights Era

This week I’m starting a new feature on this blog called “Web Series Spotlight.” I regularly get pitched series by creators and find it difficult to write about all of them, because I often write about trends and bigger ideas, sometimes good, indie series just don’t fit. No longer! The web series market has a larger, oft-discussed curation problem, something which networks and news sites are trying to fix. I figured I’d pitch in.

First up is Chrysalis, an urban web series by filmmaker Nia Malika Dixon. Dixon is a new independent filmmaker, who a few years ago decided to pursue her passion. She didn’t go to film school, instead she learned the old-fashioned way: on set (how refreshing!). Chrysalis is her third short, a five-episode crime drama intended to build investor interest in a feature-length film.

Chrysalis, whose title refers to the cocoon a caterpillar creates before it transforms, tells the story of Jamal, a young Muslim man living in Baltimore with an infant child and a less-than-desirable career choice: drug dealing. The series kicks off by introducing Jamal’s world and an act of violence which sends it into chaos.

The series is dark and moody, intimately shot and confident. It’s worth a look. The first episode, recently released for early fans, is below. But first, let’s hear from Dixon:

Dixon’s passions are thrillers and crime, along the lines of The Wire and Law & Order: SVU. What she adds to the genre is a focus on spiritual struggle: people who have made morally complicated choices at odds with their faith — in this case, Islam. She focuses on strong female characters, though Chrysalis stars a young man.

“I haven’t seen a film in my life where an African American woman stars in it and has to do with that struggle,” Dixon said, referring to a crisis of faith. “I wrote the story that way to show that not just men deal with that.”

Dixon was born and raised in Baltimore, and while the series is not autobiographical, she does understand the circumstances facing her characters. “It’s not my life. It’s the life of others that I’ve grown up with that I know.”

For now, Dixon is enjoying her outsider status as an indie filmmaker telling her own stories. “It’s very difficult to get funding as a director,” she acknowledges, but she adds, “I didn’t want to be a part of the corporate culture of making movies.”

Projects like Chrysalis are small, Dixon understands, but for her are part of a broader project for media change. “You can make change on certain levels, and the entire construct itself is so big. It won’t actually change. That sounds so bleak!”

“I don’t consider myself trying to do an overhaul of the entertainment industry, but I do see myself trying to inject myself as a virus.”

On Thursday, June 9, I attended a Gen-Art sponsored screening of Victoria Mahoney’s independent feature Yelling to the Sky in Manhattan. Starring Zöe Kravitz and co-starring Gabourey Sidibe, this film has had significant buzz. It made its debut at the Berlin Film Festival and was workshopped via Sundance Institute’s Screenwriters and Directors Lab. Based on synopses I read prior to the screening, I was curious to see if the portrayal of black women(hood) would be complex and fresh (as it was in Ava Duvernay’s wonderful I Will Follow) or if it would stick to the usual, shopworn portrayals that sometimes plague even independent feature films. I was especially interested to see whether Sidibe’s character would be similar to the one she played in Precious or if that image would be turned inside out (Sidibe was actually cast as Latonya Williams in Yelling before being slated to play Precious Jones).

In Yelling, Kravitz plays Sweetness O’Hara, a biracial high school student coming of age in New York City while managing a difficult home life. Quiet (at least for the first part of the film), sensitive, introspective, and intelligent, Sweetness has to contend with an alcoholic father, a mother with emotional (and possibly mental) issues, an older sister coping with young motherhood, bullies at school, and urban poverty. Zöe Kravitz did a great job with the script she was given; her performance was nuanced and quite believable. Actually, most of the actors in the movie were strong (including Tariq Trotter, better known as Black Thought of The Roots). However, despite the actors’ efforts, they could not overcome the disjointed storytelling nor the director’s inability to avoid well-worn tropes of the “coming of age in the ‘hood” drama. And whether intentionally or not, the director played into common cinematic (and real-life) racial memes. There were four that stood out.

Dark(er)-skinned black people are mean and like to victimize light(er)-skinned black people. The opening scene of Yelling involves Sweetness, accompanied by a friend of similar complexion, riding her bicycle right into a group of kids from her high school who in short order take her bike and beat her down in the street. Gabourey Sidibe’s character Latonya is the ringleader of this group, initiating the bullying and fighting, and ultimately ordering her boyfriend to viciously finish the job. The assault only stops when Sweetness’ sister Ola, who like Sweetness is very fair, brutally assaults her sister’s male attacker. While the director may not have intended for this scene to evoke intraracial stereotypes and conflict about skin color, it certainly looked that way on screen. Also, while Sidibe’s character was well put together (her hair was laid and her makeup was popping), she was still an (physically) intimidating bully.

Girls/teenagers/women who are “authentically” black are bad. They fight, party, don’t care about achieving anything in life, and use illicit substances. After yet another incidence of family trauma, Sweetness reinvents herself. She starts selling drugs, begins cutting class, seemingly abandons her aspiration to attend college, and gets a makeover courtesy of two of the (darker-skinned) girls who were involved in her initial beat down. Her new look involves rocking doorknocker earrings, sashaying down neighborhood streets and school hallways in tight jeans, putting on lots of eye shadow and lip gloss, and a wearing a cornrow on the right side of her hair. She also enacts revenge upon Latonya, again with assistance from her two new friends, beating her bloody between classes. Near the end of the movie when it seems that Sweetness in trying to return to her old ways of being, she distances herself from her friends, apologizes to Latonya for beating her up, and pleads with her school’s guidance counselor to get her into any college that will accept her. Sweetness’ trajectory is not uncommon to young people of all races and ethnicities, especially when dealing with challenging life circumstances. But in this particular film, her journey to and return from darkness are literally marked by her association with and ultimate dissociation from those who are dark (of skin).

Dark(er)-skinned black male patriarchs mean well even when they’re doing bad, and they always abandon their kids in the end. When Sweetness wants to get into the drug game to supplement her family’s meager (non-existent?) income, she seeks out Roland (Black Thought’s character). He’s an educated hoodlum…you know, the black man that would be a CEO, were it not for America’s racist brand of capitalism. Roland resists Sweetness’ initial requests for him to put her on. But after being worn down by her relentless requests, he acquiesces and becomes her mentor and supplier. His daddy-figure drug dealer status is cemented when he also rejects Kravitz’s character’s romantic advances after a night of partying. Contrasted with the stoner sellers that Sweetness sometimes works alongside in her school’s stairwells, Roland’s selling of illicit substances seems almost righteous. In that way, he’s not dissimilar from other sympathetic drug slingers like Ice Cube’s Doughboy (Boyz ‘N The Hood) and Chris Tucker’s affable Smokey of Friday fame. But in the end, Roland puts Sweetness in harms way when he brings her to a drug pick-up that goes wrong. He ultimately ends up bleeding on a neighborhood basketball court after getting shot in retribution for the deal gone bad. Sweetness witnesses his murder after playing ball with him minutes earlier. But it’s not surprising. Black men always end up leaving their children to fend for themselves.

Interracial relationships are dysfunctional and make everyone involved unhappy. Sweetness and Ola have a white, alcoholic father and a black, emotionally impaired mother. Their mother seems shell-shocked and is actually missing-with little explanation-throughout most of the movie. Earlier in the film, it seems that she literally abandons her children, but later it’s hinted that she was in a mental institution. The father physically assaults everyone in the house at least once during the film and regularly metes out verbal punishment. Near the end of the film, again with little in the way of explanation, Sweetness’ father decides to actually attempt to parent her. He tries to keep her off the streets and pull her off the dark path she’s started to follow, becoming her savior. The O’Hara’s family dynamic embodies three classic celluloid tropes: black mothers are bad and/or incompetent, white people/men are the ones who save the day, and (female) children who are the products of interracial relationships have tragic lives.

Zöe Kravitz as Sweetness, good girl gone bad.

Though I enjoyed the visual quality of this film and at times, the lyrical storytelling, I felt that Victoria Mahoney tread well-traveled ground. Yelling to the Sky seemed to me a mash-up of Kids, Larry Clark’s tale of urban teenage nihilism, and Proenza-Schouler’s controversial Act Da Fool; visually captivating, emotionally brutal, and unstereotypical in its presentation of stereotypes of black/biracial women and urban blackness.

While Mahoney is black and/or a woman of color (she was profiled in the April 2011 issue of Essence in an article about black independent filmmakers, “Independent Women”), that does not mean that she is incapable of promoting prosaic images of black women and people. I was unable to unearth much about Mahoney’s background, except that she worked as an actress, then moved into directing/writing/producing. I have no idea what her experience as a non-white woman has been. However, whether or not she meant to make statements about race, the images she has put forth still speak to some “truths” held by her and/or a society steeped in white supremacy. As bell hooks said in Outlaw Culture, “Whether we like it or not, cinema assumes a pedagogical role in the lives of many people. It may not be the intent of the filmmaker to teach audiences anything, but that does not mean that lessons are not learned.”

Now this is the kind of horror movie I can get behind. What’s a guy to do when he finds himself up against a zombie apocalypse?

Why, make a little freelance money, of course.

That’s at least one of the plots driving the upcoming Cuban release Juan De Los Muertos (a.k.a. Juan Of The Dead,) which borrows the title, but seemingly not much else from Shaun Of The Dead. Director Alejandro Brugues told the BBC the film is about how Cubans react to a crisis (“we’ve had a lot of them over the last 50 years”), and the title character’s pragmatism comes across early on in the film’s trailer.

“I am a survivor,” Juan tells us. “I survived Mariel. I survived the Special Period and that thing that came later, and nothing’s gonna change that.”

Needless to say, he’s already more world-weary than Simon Pegg’s naive Shaun. But Juan’s philosophy also gets challenged in a big way when the undead spread across the land. Suddenly, his country is being torn apart, the government is blaming the U.S., and the market is growing for the disposal of “dissidents.”

Viva Capitalism? Not quite, according to executive producer Inti Herrera. She told The Guardian, “Zombie films are typically in an Anglo-Saxon context and we wanted this one to be contextualised here in Havana.”

Juan is also making waves because it’s the first full-length horror movie to emerge in 50 years from the otherwise ineffectual Cuban film scene, where scripts must meet government approval. According to CNN, Brugues’ film is backed by not only Cuba’s Institute of Cinematographic Industry and Arts, but a Spanish production company. Even with a relatively big $2.3 million budget, though, there’s a DIY verve all over the trailer. Well, that and blood splatters. So if your workplace doesn’t mind some gore, check the trailer out below: