Bluegrass Film Society: Spring 2019 Schedule

1/14: Two Days, One Night (Belgium: Dardenne Brothers, 2014: 95 mins)

1/15: The Endless (USA: Justin Benson/Aaron Morehead, 2017: 111 mins)

1/22: Blindspotting (USA: Carlos López Estrada, 2018: 95 mins)

1/28: Three Outlaw Samurai (Japan: Hideo Gosha, 1964: 95 mins)

1/29: Leave No Trace (USA/Canada: Debra Granik, 2018: 109 mins)

2/4: Smithereens (USA: Susan Seidelman, 1982: 93 min)

2/5: Jeannette: The Childhood of Joan of Arc (France: Bruno Dumont, 2017: 105 mins)

2/11: The Other Side of Hope (Finland: Aki Kaurismäki, 2017: 100 mins)

2/12: BlacKkKlansman (USA: Spike Lee, 2018: 135 mins)

2/19: The Killing of a Sacred Deer (UK/Ireland/USA: Yorgos Lanthimos, 2017: 121 mins)

2/25: Letter Never Sent (Soviet Union: Mikhail Kalatozov, 1959: 96 min)

2/26: Coherence (USA/UK: James Ward Byrkit, 2013: 89 mins)

3/4: Death by Hanging (Japan: Nagisa Oshima, 1968: 118 mins)

3/5: Paddington 2 (UK/France/USA: Paul King, 2017: 103 mins)

3/25: Dheepan (France: Jacques Audiard, 2015: 115 mins)

3/26: Won't You Be My Neighbor (USA: Morgan Neville, 2018: 94 mins)

4/1: I, Daniel Blake (UK/France/Belgium: Ken Loach, 2016: 100 mins)

4/2: Madeline's Madeline (USA: Josephine Decker, 2018: 93 mins)

4/8: Foxtrot (Israel: Samuel Maoz, 2017: 113 mins)

4/9: Burning (South Korea: Lee Chang-Dong, 2018: 148 mins)

4/15: Wildlife (USA: Paul Dano, 2018: 105 mins)

4/16: Lover for a Day (France: Philippe Garrel, 2017: 76 mins)

4/22: Graduation (Romania/France/Belgium: Cristian Mungiu, 2016: 128 mins)

4/23: Before We Vanish (Japan: Kiyoshi Kurosawa, 2018: 129 mins)

4/29: Cold Water (France: Olivier Assayas, 1994: 92 mins)

4/30: BPM - Beats Per Minute (France: Robin Campillo, 2017: 143 mins)

5/6: Border (Sweden/Denmark: Ali Abbasi, 2018: 110 mins)

5/7: The Ornithologist (Portugal/France/Brazil: João Pedro Rodrigues, 2016: 117 mins)

Dialogic Cinephilia - December 30, 2018

Anderson, Jake. "The Handmaiden." Letterboxd (December 29, 2018)




Carter, Erica. "Margarethe von Trotta: 'Becoming a director was always the real goal.'" Sight & Sound (November 23, 2018)

Davies, William (read by Andrew McGregor). "Why We Stopped Trusting Elites." Audio Long Reads (December 14, 2018)

McCann, Ruairí. "Ash is Purest White." Photogénie (October 19, 2018)

McGreal, Chris (read by Lucy Scott). "The Making of an Opioid Epidemic." Audio Long Reads (December 3, 2018) ["When high doses of painkillers led to widespread addiction, it was called one of the biggest mistakes in modern medicine. But this was no accident."]

Movius, Geoffrey. "An Interview with Susan Sontag." Boston Review (June 1, 1975) [Photography, memory, history, identity (cultural & individual), and representation]




Ng, Alan. "Palacios." Film Threat (December 28, 2018)

"Revisiting The Dark Crystal." Breaking the Glass Slipper (August 23, 2018)  ["If you haven’t seen this cult Henson classic, The Dark Crystal tells the story of Jen, the last – or so he believes – Gelfling, who is prophesied to bring about the fall of the evil Skesis and heal a powerful relic, the titular Dark Crystal. His story is modelled on the classic chosen one trope, where a young and inexperienced boy holds the fate of the world in his hands. This film was made in 1982, so how does it hold up? The advantage of fantasy is that it has the potential to avoid looking as dated as films like The Terminator or The Lost Boys. At the time it was made, TDC was hailed as the only live action film in which a human character makes no appearance. So is it the use of puppetry that keeps the years at bay? And can we forgive the film its stereotypes that – after 30 years of commercial fantasy – now make us cringe?"]

Wilson, Bee (read by Ruth Barnes). "Yes, Bacon Really is Killing Us." Audio Long Reads (December 25, 2018) ["Decades’ worth of research proves that chemicals used to make bacon do cause cancer. So how did the meat industry convince us it was safe?"]

Dialogic Cinephilia - December 13, 2018

Advertising/Marketing/Public Relations/Lobbying Dialogic Cinephilia (Ongoing Archive)

Ehrlich, David. "The 25 Best Movie Moments of 2018, According to IndieWire Critic David Ehrlich." IndieWire (December 3, 2018)

Graeber, David. "On Inequality and Human History." Against the Grain (November 21, 2018) ["Open any world history book and you’ll read that the Neolithic Revolution was the key turning point in human history, when hunter gatherers gave up roaming in small egalitarian tribes and settled down to farm. Out of that, civilization was born, with all the benefits and ills connected to it: the rise of cities, the emergence of the state, inequality, and class society. But, according to anthropologist David Graeber, that tale is not based on fact. Graeber interrogates this chronicle of paradise lost — and much more."]

Lepore, Jill. "On the Construction of American Citizenship." At Liberty #25 (December 6, 2018) ["Almost 250 years after the adoption of the Declaration of the Independence, debates about founding principles like equality, rights, and representation are as fraught as ever. Jill Lepore, a Harvard history professor and New Yorker staff writer, discusses her latest book, “These Truths,” an ambitious exploration of the evolution of our nation from its earliest days."]

Merat, Arron. "Terrorists, cultists – or champions of Iranian democracy? The wild wild story of the MEK." The Guardian's Audio Long Reads (Read by Lucy Scott: November 30, 2018) ["They fought for the Iranian revolution – and then for Saddam Hussein. The US and UK once condemned them. But now their opposition to Tehran has made them favourites of Trump White House hardliners."]

Nicholson-Smith, Donald. "May 1968 and the Situationist International." Against the Grain (November 28, 2018) ["Half a century ago, revolt broke out around the world, making the year 1968 synonymous with left-wing rebellion. In France, students and workers paralyzed the country during a heady month of massive wildcat strikes and factory occupations, during which the government feared it would be toppled. Donald Nicholson-Smith discusses May ’68 and the Situationist ideas that helped fuel the upheaval."]

Petkova, Savina. "High Life." Photogénie (October 19, 2018)




Philip, Tom. "Cam is a New Kind of Horror Movie." GQ (November 23, 2018)

Strangio, Chase. "A Shifting Landscape for Transgender Rights." At Liberty #24 (November 29, 2018) ["The state of transgender equality is in rapid flux in state legislatures, in federal law, in the courts and at the ballot box. Progress is consistently met with backlash. In the past midterm election, Massachusetts voters staved off an effort to dismantle legal protection for trans individuals in public spaces. Yet the Supreme Court is poised to reconsider legal victories won by trans plaintiffs in the federal courts, and Trump's White House seeks to exclude trans people from the military and from federal anti-discrimination law. Chase Strangio, staff attorney with the ACLU’s LGBT and HIV Project, discusses the current legal landscape."]




Wood, Sarah. "Imagine." Essays About Margarethe von Trotta (November 16, 2018)

Dialogic Cinephilia - December 12, 2018

Blyth, Mark and Jim Green. "Making Sense of Brazil's 2018 Presidential Election: Part 1." Trending Globally: Politics and Policy (October 1, 2018)

---. "Making Sense of Brazil's 2018 Presidential Election: Part 2." Trending Globally: Politics and Policy (October 24, 2018)

---. "Making Sense of Brazil's 2018 Presidential Election: Part 3." Trending Globally: Politics and Policy (October 29, 2018)

Longworth, Katrina. "D.W. Griffith, The Gish Sisters and the Origin of Hollywood Babylon." You Must Remember This (July 2, 2018)

Nakahodo, Neil, Sarah Smith and Shelly Yang. "The Spirit of Fear." McClatchy (December 9, 2018) ["Hundreds of sex abuse allegations found in fundamental Baptist churches across U.S."]

Petkova, Savina. "Architecture of Desire: Lanthimos' The Favourite." Photogénie (November 23, 2018)




Preziosi, Patrick. "“Why Don’t You Ever Take Me In Your Arms”: Claire Denis’ Cinema of Intimacy." Photogénie (November 16, 2018)




Reitman, Jason. "The Front Runner." The Treatment (November 30, 2018) ["Director, Jason Reitman, has a knack for examining stories that show life's messiness with films life "Juno" and "Thank You For Smoking." He further breaks down life in the public eye as a politician in "The Front Runner," following the rise of 1988 Democratic Presidential Nominee front runner Gary Hart who unexpectedly fell from the race and limelight amid affair allegations. On The Treatment, Reitman shares his interest in bringing real life scenarios to the big screen and the reactions of the real life players in his film."]

Slurring Bee 18

Also need 15 absurd/quirky warm up questions

Pronouncer Information 1. Read carefully the Judges, Recorders, Spellers and Audiences information that is included in the Scripps pronouncers’ guide. 2. Familiarize yourself with all words on the confidential word list. Pronunciation is important. A meeting with the judges to insure pronunciation of words and procedures will be scheduled prior to the Bee beginning. 3. Speak clearly for contestants, judges and audience alike. Grant all requests to repeat a word until the judges agree that the word has been made reasonably clear to the speller. You may request the speller to speak more clearly or louder. 4. “Pace” yourself. You need time to focus attention on the pronunciation of the new word and the judges need a few moments between each contestant to do their tasks.

Speller’s Information 1. Each speller needs to focus on the Pronouncer, to aid his or her hearing and understanding of the context of the word. A speller may ask for the word to be repeated, for its use in a sentence, for a definition, for the part of speech, and for the language of origin. 2. Each speller should pronounce the word before and after spelling it. If the speller fails to pronounce the word after spelling it, the judge may ask if they are finished. If they say yes, the judge will remind the speller to remember to repeat the word the next time. (No speller will be eliminated for failing to pronounce a word.) 3. When a speller is at the podium spelling, the next speller should be standing at a marked location ready to proceed to the podium.


445) recalcitrant

446) obstreperous

447) truculent

448) pugnacious

449) internecine

450) susurrus

451) polygyny




Slurring bee #2: 64

Dialogic Cinephilia - December 9, 2018

Andrew, Geoff. "The Magician: Through a Glass Drolly." The Current (October 12, 2010)

Danton, Eric R. "Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy Upends the Rock-Star Memoir with Let’s Go." Los Angeles Review of Books (December 8, 2018)

Ebiri, Bilge. "Mothra, Jigoku, Godzilla: A Postwar Japanese Horror Primer." Vulture (October 29, 2018)




Eggert, Brian. "Suspiria." Deep Focus Review (October 26, 2018)

Heller-Nicholas, Alexander. "Three Mothers Redux: Kathy Acker, Pina Bausch, Tilda Swinton and Luca Guadagnino’s Suspiria." Senses of Cinema #88 (October 2018)

Ivins, Laura. "Robert Bresson's Surrealist Affinities." A Place for Cinema (November 15, 2018)

Jordan, Michael B. "Creed II." The Treatment (November 23, 2018) ["Playing prideful characters coming into their own is something you see regularly in actor Michael B. Jordan's career with films like "Black Panther" and "Creed". Reprising his role alongside Sylvester Stallone, Jordan continues the emotionally charged journey of Adonis Creed in the sequel "Creed II". Today on The Treatment, Jordan joins Elvis in a discussion in choosing the film roles he does and his collaborations with longtime friend and filmmaker Ryan Coogler."]




McCann, Ruairí. "Zhangke Going Home: Retrospection in the Cinema of Jia Zhangke." Photogénie (December 3, 2018)

Reznor, Trent and Atticus Ross. "Variety's 2018 Music for Screens Summit." The Treatment (November 9, 2018) ["Before Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross won an Oscar for their score of "The Social Network", they were and continue to be part of industrial rock band Nine Inch Nails. Elvis recently sat down with them at Variety Magazine's Music for Screens Summit to discuss their careers, industry expectations of music accompaniment in film and their most recent work scoring Jonah Hill's directorial debut film "MID90s"."]

Dialogic Cinephilia - December 8, 2018

Assayas, Olivier. "A Portrait of the Artist: Bergman's The Magician." The Current (October 12, 2010)

The Brussels Business (Belgium/Austria/USA/France/Switzerland/Indonesia/UK: Matthieu Lietaert and Friedrich Moser, 2012: 85 mins) ["Brussels, the capital and largest city of Belgium, has a long history of hosting the institutions of the European Union within its European Quarter; while the Union itself claims it has no capital and no plans to declare one—despite the fact that Brussels hosts the official seats of the European Commission, Council of the European Union, and European Council, as well as a seat of the European Parliament. In any event, it is here—in this centre of smoke and mirrors—that exists one of the largest concentrations of lobbyist power in the world. The Brussels Business scratches the surface of this extensive world hidden-from-view by looking at the direct influence of lobbyists and the complete lack of transparency in the decision-making processes. Speaking with lobbyists and activists themselves, The Brussels Business reveals the beginnings of a vast landscape of PR conglomerates, front companies, think-tanks and their closely-interlinking networks of power and ties to political and economic elites. The questions then become: Who actually runs the European Union? How? And why?]





Potter, Will. "The Secret U.S. Prisons You've Never Heard of Before." TED Talks (August 2015) ["Investigative journalist Will Potter is the only reporter who has been inside a Communications Management Unit, or CMU, within a US prison. These units were opened secretly, and radically alter how prisoners are treated -- even preventing them from hugging their children. Potter, a TED Fellow, shows us who is imprisoned here, and how the government is trying to keep them hidden. "The message was clear," he says. "Don't talk about this place.""]





Shambu, Girish. "The Other Side of Hope: No-Home Movie." The Current (May 14, 2018)





Steal This Film (UK/Germany/Sweden: The League of Noble Peers, 2006: 32 minutes) ["Presenting accounts from prominent players such as The Pirate Bay, Piratbyrån, and the Pirate Party in the Swedish piracy culture, Steal This Film documents the movement against intellectual property. In particular, the film provides critical analysis of the alleged regulatory capture attempt performed by the Hollywood film lobby to leverage economic sanctions by the United States government on Sweden through the WTO…"]

Stevenson, Bryan. "On Challenging the Legacy of Racial Inequality in America: the Work of the Equal Justice Initiative." Slavery and Its Legacies (February 6, 2017) ["Bryan Stevenson is the founder and Executive Director of the Equal Justice Initiative in Montgomery, Alabama. Mr. Stevenson is a widely acclaimed public interest lawyer who has dedicated his career to helping the poor, the incarcerated and the condemned. Under his leadership, EJI has won major legal challenges eliminating excessive and unfair sentencing, exonerating innocent death row prisoners, confronting abuse of the incarcerated and the mentally ill and aiding children prosecuted as adults. Mr. Stevenson has successfully argued several cases in the United States Supreme Court and recently won an historic ruling that mandatory life-without-parole sentences for all children 17 or younger are unconstitutional. Mr. Stevenson and his staff have won reversals, relief or release for over 115 wrongly condemned prisoners on death row. Mr. Stevenson has initiated major new anti-poverty and anti-discrimination efforts that challenge the legacy of racial inequality in America, including major projects to educate communities about slavery, lynching and racial segregation. Mr. Stevenson is also a Professor of Law at the New York University School of Law."]

This Is What Democracy Looks Like (USA: Jill Friedberg and Rick Rowley, 2000: 72 mins) ["Recorded by over 100 media activists, this film tells the story of the enormous street protests in Seattle, Washington in November 1999, against the World Trade Organisation summit. Vowing to oppose—among other faults—the WTO’s power to arbitrarily overrule nations’ environmental, social and labour policies in favour of unbridled corporate greed, thousands of people from all around the United States came out in force to stop the summit. Against them was a brutal police force and a hostile media. This Is What Democracy Looks Like documents the struggle, as well as providing a narrative to the history of success and failure of modern political resistance movements."]

David Cromwell & David Edwards: Journalist/Editor of Media Lens

Cromwell, David. "Bias Towards Power *Is* Corporate Media ‘Objectivity’: Journalism, Floods And Climate Silence." Media Lens (February 13, 2014)

---. "‘How Dare You!’ The Climate Crisis And The Public Demand For Real Action." Media Lens (September 30, 2019)

Cromwell, David and David Edwards. "Assange Arrest - Part 1: 'So Now He's Our Property.'" Media Lens (April 16, 2019) 

---. "Assange Arrest – Part 2: ‘A Definite Creep, A Probable Rapist.'" Media Lens (April 18, 2019)

---. "Snowden, Surveillance And The Secret State." Media Lens (June 28, 2013)

---. "‘A Suffocating Groupthink’: Sampling The Corporate Media On Israel, Iran, Syria And Russia." Media Lens (May 16, 2018)

---. "'Sworn Enemies'? A Response To George Monbiot." Media Lens (November 6, 2012)

Edwards, David. "Fake News about 'Fake News': The Media Performance Pyramid." Media Lens (December 5, 2016)

---. "The Filter Bubble - Owen Jones And Con Coughlin." Media Lens (November 14, 2018) ["In a dream, the common sense rules and rationality of everyday life are, of course, suspended – we float to the top of the stairs, a cat smiles, a person is beheaded at the dinner table and the vegetables are served. In similar vein, Iraq was destroyed in a nakedly illegal oil grab, more than one million human beings were killed, and the 'mainstream' continued to treat the criminals responsible as respectable statespeople, and to take seriously their subsequent calls for 'humanitarian intervention' in oil-rich Libya. With Libya reduced to ruins, the same journalists dreamed on, treating the same criminals with the same respect as they sought yet one more regime change in Syria. This nightmare version of 'news' is maintained by a corporate 'filter bubble' that blocks facts, ideas and sources that challenge state-corporate control of politics, economics and culture. It is maintained by a mixture of ruthless high-level control and middle- and lower-level compromise, conformity and self-serving blindness."]

---. "Filtering the Election." Media Lens (November 18, 2016)

---. "The Shaving Kit - Manufacturing The Julian Assange Witch-Hunt." Media Lens (June 20, 2019)

Media Lens  ["Since 2001, we have been describing how mainstream newspapers and broadcasters operate as a propaganda system for the elite interests that dominate modern society. The costs of their disinformation in terms of human and animal suffering, and environmental breakdown, are incalculable. We show how news and commentary are ‘filtered’ by the media’s profit-orientation, by its dependence on advertisers, parent companies, wealthy owners and official news sources.We check the media’s version of events against credible facts and opinion provided by journalists, academics and specialist researchers. We then publish both versions, together with our commentary, in free Media Alerts and invite readers to deliver their verdict both to us and to mainstream journalists through the email addresses provided in our ’Suggested Action’ at the end of each alert. We urge correspondents to adopt a polite, rational and respectful tone at all times – we strongly oppose all abuse and personal attack. We also publish Cogitations, exploring related personal and philosophical themes.  In 2007, Media Lens was awarded the Gandhi Foundation International Peace Prize. "]

Media Lens Youtube Page

Dialogic Cinephilia - December 7, 2018

Felber, Garrett.  "The Missing Malcolm X." Boston Review (November 28, 2018) ["Our understanding of Malcolm X is inextricably linked to his autobiography, but newly discovered materials force us to reexamine his legacy. "]

Hamilton, Anne. "The Others." Switchblade Sisters #5 (December 7, 2017) ["Things get spooky as April talks to director Anne Hamilton about the 2001 gothic horror film, The Others. They discuss Nicole Kidman's casting in the film, the director Alejandro Amenábar's rejection of Catholicism, and how films like these just don't exist anymore. Plus, Anne discusses what she would have done differently had she directed The Others, and what is was like working on her own gothic film, American Fable."]

Kumar, Chaitanya. "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind." This Movie Changed Me (March 6, 2018) ["If you could, would you erase memories of past lovers? This idea is at the heart of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and Chaitanya Kumar says he wouldn't. Still, the movie made him rethink the way we experience and remember love."]

Preempting Dissent (Canada: Greg Elmer and Andy Opel, 2014: 42 mins) ["The legacy of the Bush administration and the so-called “War on Terror” includes a new logic that stretches well beyond the realm of overzealous security agencies, airport security and international relations, and into suppressing public protest; expanded surveillance aimed at entire populations, but especially activists; and mobilising fear for social control. Special police techniques have even been developed and applied in order to specifically suppress dissent and manage protests, especially in the wake of the rising anti-globalisation movements towards the turn of the millennium. Preempting Dissentprovides a quick overview of how some of this logic developed, as well as a glimpse of how political protest in the West has been shaped and controlled in the “post-9/11″ years, up to and including the so-called Occupy movement. By provoking a reflection of the implications of the logic of the “War on Terror” and how its applied to stifle political protest, Preempting Dissent aims to lay some of the groundwork to develop more effective resistance tactics."]

Sterritt, David. "Rocco and His Brothers." Cineaste (Winter 2018)

Dialogic Cinephilia - December 6, 2018

Attree, Lizzy. "Reclaiming Africa’s Stolen Histories Through Fiction." Los Angeles Review of Books (July 11, 2018)

Bengal, Rebecca. "Smithereens: Breakfast at the Peppermint Lounge." The Current (August 20, 2018)

Benton, Michael. Recommended Films of 2015 Letterboxd (Ongoing Archive)

Boekhout, Kelly Van, Katherine Epps and Elisha Huntoon. "Top Censored News Stories of 2017 - 2018: #12 ICE Intends to Destroy Records of Inhumane Treatment of Immigrants." Project Censored (October 2, 2018)

Ford, Ashley C. "The Nightmare Before Christmas." Movies That Changed Me (February 6, 2018) ["The Nightmare Before Christmas helped writer Ashley C. Ford accept life’s imperfections. As a kid, the movie taught her that it was okay to be different and to embrace the weird and the creepy."]

Goetz, Kristina. "They Are Lions: A New Louisville School For Boys’ Powerful Push To Make History." LEO Weekly (December 5, 2018)

Goldstein, Dana. "Nation’s First Teachers’ Strike at Charter Network Begins in Chicago." The New York Times (December 4, 2018)  ["Charters are funded by taxpayers but independently managed by nonprofit organizations, like Acero, or by for-profit companies. Educators at Acero earn up to $13,000 less than their counterparts at traditional public schools in Chicago and cannot afford to live comfortably in an increasingly expensive city, according to the Chicago Teachers Union, which represents the striking workers. The chief executive of Acero, Richard L. Rodriguez, earns about $260,000 annually to manage 15 schools, a similar salary to that of Janice K. Jackson, the chief executive of the Chicago Public Schools system, which includes over 500 schools. In addition to higher pay for teachers and support staff, the union is asking that more money be spent on special education services for students and on a program that allows classroom assistants to continue their education and become lead teachers. The union also argues that Acero’s class sizes — up to 32 students at every grade level — are too high."]

Greene, David. "Star Wars IV: A New Hope." This Movie Changed Me (January 23, 2018)

Larsen, Josh. "Roma." Larsen on Film (ND)

"Martin Scorsese Creates a List of the 11 Scariest Horror Films." Open Culture (October 31, 2018)

Dialogic Cinephilia - December 5, 2018

Ebiri, Bilge. "Three Outlaw Samurai: The Disloyal Bunch." The Current (February 14, 2012)

Hugo, Kristin. "Indigenous people want to make Amazon rainforest world's biggest protected area." The Independent (November 21, 2018)




López, Issa. "Pan's Labyrinth." Switchblade Sisters #4 (November 30, 2017) ["This week is a fantastical episode of Switchblade Sisters where April sits down with director Issa Lopez to discuss the influential Guillermo Del Toro film, Pan's Labyrinth. Issa opens up about her lonesome adolescence, the death of her mother, and how these events influenced her work. She tells April about the emotional process of working with children on her most recent film, the fantasy-horror Tigers Are Not Afraid. And she also discusses the culture of witchcraft and magic in Mexico and how that pervades many Mexican artist's work."]

Mazhukhina, Karina. "Washington to implement best paid family & medical leave in America in 2019." KATU2 (November 30, 2018)

Shambu, Girish. "Two Days, One Night." The Current (August 25, 2015) ["Since the financial crisis, we have increasingly seen a critique of capitalism—even if often only a cautious one—in mainstream media and culture. But usually the underlying assumption in these discussions is that capitalism is a monolithic entity—one that has stood, intact and still, in the same form, for a couple of centuries. The history of economics tells us otherwise. There have in fact been many capitalisms over the years. For example, the Keynesian “controlled capitalism” that took hold in the years of the New Deal, to help relieve national economic suffering in the U.S. during the Great Depression, was quite different from the more rapacious, unregulated capitalism that had reigned a few decades earlier.  Since around 1980, we have been witnessing the rise of a new breed of capitalism, neoliberalism, which is achieving global domination with the unwavering agenda of reducing taxes on corporations and the rich, massively deregulating industries, slashing public spending on social programs, and “liberalizing” labor markets (code for giving companies free rein in their hiring and firing decisions). This model of capitalism, after steady escalation over three decades, has now become firmly entrenched in our lives, workplaces, and cultures. And it is on the social and economic repercussions arising from it that the Dardennes have been turning their camera. Their belief is clear: by creating new and indelible images of this virulent model, we can fight it, laying the ground from which a newer, more just social-economic form can grow."]






Solis, Jose. "Never Look Away." The Film Stage (December 3, 2018)

Sterritt, David. "Sweet Movie: Wake Up!" The Current (June 18, 2007) ["Whatever you’ve heard about Sweet Movie, the audacious and outrageous political comedy by Yugoslav filmmaker Dušan Makavejev, there’s a good chance it’s wrong. Ever since this mischievous masterpiece had its Cannes premiere, in 1974, ill-advised pundits have been calling it uncouth, uncivilized, and offensive. Offensiveness is one of its great strategies, to be sure, but critics who call it a nonstop orgy of odious acts couldn’t have looked very closely at what’s actually on the screen. Far from gratuitous, Sweet Movie is an artistically earnest, politically savvy film that uses every means at its disposal—deadly serious one moment, wildly hilarious the next—to jolt viewers out of lazy, hazy mind-sets that stifle freedom, creativity, and bliss."]

Sweet Movie (Canada/France/West Germany: Dusan Makavejev, 1974) Dialogic Cinephilia (Ongoing Archive)

Yang, Amber. "The Top 25 Censored News Stories of 2017 - 2018: #13 The Limits of Negative News and Importance of Constructive Media." Project Censored (October 2, 2018)

Sweet Movie (Canada/France/West Germany: Dusan Makavejev, 1974)

Sweet Movie (Canada/France/West Germany: Dusan Makavejev, 1974: 98 mins)

Arf, Michelle. "Sweet Movie and the Body as Politics." PopOptiq (ND)

Barker, Jennifer Lynne. The Aesthetics of Antifascist Film: Radical Projection. Routledge, 2013.

Mortimer, Lorraine. "Something Against Nature: Sweet Movie, 4, and Disgust."Senses of Cinema #59 (2011)

---. Terror and Joy: The Films of Dušan Makavejev. University of Minnesota Press, 2009.

Owen, Jonathan. "Dusan Makavejev obituary: The revolutionary ringmaster of Yugoslav film." Sight and Sound (February 2, 2019)

Sterritt, David. "Sweet Movie: Wake Up!" The Current (June 18, 2007) ["Whatever you’ve heard about Sweet Movie, the audacious and outrageous political comedy by Yugoslav filmmaker Dušan Makavejev, there’s a good chance it’s wrong. Ever since this mischievous masterpiece had its Cannes premiere, in 1974, ill-advised pundits have been calling it uncouth, uncivilized, and offensive. Offensiveness is one of its great strategies, to be sure, but critics who call it a nonstop orgy of odious acts couldn’t have looked very closely at what’s actually on the screen. Far from gratuitous, Sweet Movie is an artistically earnest, politically savvy film that uses every means at its disposal—deadly serious one moment, wildly hilarious the next—to jolt viewers out of lazy, hazy mind-sets that stifle freedom, creativity, and bliss."]

Dialogic Cinephilia - December 3, 2018

"25 Underrated Horror Films for Halloween." Roger Ebert (October 29, 2018)

Jenkins, David. "RIP Nicolas Roeg: A career interview with the late British filmmaker." Little White Lies (November 27, 2018)

---. "Roma." Little White Lies (November 30, 2018)

Lamb, Robert and Christian Sager. "Six Ghost Stories." Stuff to Blow Your Mind (October 10, 2017) ["Human superstition provides us with an overwhelming wealth of ghost stories, each an unreal creation that reveals something crucial about culture, history and psychology. In this episode of the Stuff to Blow Your Mind podcast, Robert and Christian explore six ghost stories from around the world and discuss what they reveal about the (living) human experience."]





Lamb, Robert and Christian Sager. "The Science of It: Deadlights and Derry." Stuff to Blow Your Mind (October 5, 2017) ["If you’ve read Stephen King’s “It” or recoiled in fear from the 2017 film and the 1990 miniseries, then perhaps you’ve wondered what science can reveal about Pennywise the Dancing Clown and the horrors of Derry, Maine. Join Robert and Christian as they consider the monster science of the creature itself and various, real world explanations that grown-ups might turn to for a town gone bad."]





Nochimson, Martha P. "New York Film Festival Review: The Favorite." Eye on Media (September 30, 2018)

Rodorff, Matthias. "Antislavery Sentiments and Experiences of African-Canadians During the Civil War Era." Slavery and Its Legacies (January 30, 2017) ["In this episode Thomas Thurston spoke with Mathias Rodorff, a PhD candidate at the University of Munich and a visiting fellow at the Gilder Lehrman Center, about his current work, which investigates why Nova Scotian newspapers paid such close attention to the contest in the United States over issues of slavery, emancipation, and equality while never considering how these issues might have played out in their province. Rodorff considers this in the context of other domestic events, like the heated debates over Nova Scotia’s role in the Canadian Confederation."]

Dialogic Cinephilia - December 2, 2018

Boccanfuso, Dominique. "Top 25 Censored News Stories 2017 - 2018: #14 FBI Paid Geek Squad Employees as 'Confidential Human Source' Informants." Project Censored (October 2, 2018)

Brones, Anne and Cheryl Strayed. "Sharing Wisdom." She Explores #78 (ND) ["Cheryl Strayed never planned on giving advice professionally and doesn’t love a guru, but she agrees with Anna Brones that everyone has wisdom to bestow upon others. The key is to seek as much as you share."]

Ehrlich, David. "30 Terrifyingly Under-Appreciated Horror Movies — IndieWire Critics Survey." IndieWire (October 29, 2018)

Fales, Adam. "Horror in Revision: On the Contemporary Gothic." Los Angeles Review of Books (January 23, 2018)

Nochimson, Martha P. "The Square: Conflicts Between Civilization and Chaos." Eye on Media (January 25, 2018)

Raup, Jordan. "Annihilation." The Film Stage (February 21, 2018) ["More terrifying than any creature Hollywood could dream up is the unraveling of one’s mind—the steady loss of a consciousness as defined by the memories, motivations, and knowledge built up from decades of experience and reflection. With Annihilation, Alex Garland’s beautiful, frightening follow-up to Ex Machina, he portrays this paralyzing sensation with a sense of vivid imagination, and also delivers a cadre of horrifying creatures to boot."]

---. "John Waters’ Top 10 Films of 2018 Includes Jeannette, Blindspotting, and Custody." The Film Stage (December 1, 2018)

Yang, Amber. "The Top Censored News Stories of 2017 - 2018: #15 Digital Justice: Internet Co-ops Resist Net Neutrality Rollbacks." Project Censored (October 2, 2018)

Dialogic Cinephilia - December 1, 2018

"The 100 Greatest Horror Films of All Time." Slant (October 22, 2018)

Beardsmore, Jo, Kelly Coogan-Gehr and Hosnieh Djafari-Marbini. "Medicare for All: As Healthcare Costs Soar, Momentum Grows to Guarantee Healthcare for All Americans." Democracy Now (November 30, 2018) ["As Democrats prepare to take control of the House, pressure is growing on the Democratic leadership to embrace Medicare for All. Nearly 50 newly Democratic members of Congress campaigned for Medicare for All. In the last year, 123 incumbent House Democrats also co-sponsored Medicare for All legislation, double the number who supported a Medicare for All bill in the previous legislative session. Meanwhile, pharmaceutical, insurance and hospital companies are paying close attention. As the Intercept’s Lee Fang reports, over the summer the groups formed a partnership to fight the growing support for expanding Medicare. We speak to three proponents of Medicare for All who have assembled in Burlington, Vermont, for a gathering of the Sanders Institute: Kelly Coogan-Gehr of National Nurses United, British anesthesiologist Dr. Hosnieh Djafari-Marbini and organizer Jo Beardsmore."]

Bennett, Michael Ivan and Gregory Claeys. "Dystopia." Radio West (April 23, 2018) ["Monday, we’re talking about dystopias. Which means we’re also talking about utopias. You can’t have one without the other. Whether political, environmental, or technological, literary or historical, dystopias are what you get when our ideas of societal perfection run up against the hard truths of reality and the flaws of human nature. We’ll discuss where the idea of dystopia comes from, what dystopian worlds look like, and what they say about who we are, what we hope for, and what we fear."]

Benton, Michael Dean. "Thinking." Dialogic Cinephilia (Ongoing Archive)




"Blues Harp." See Hear #53 (June 26, 2018) ["The film tells the story of two young men, each with very different goals in life. One is a member of a Yakuza clan who has dreams of heading becoming boss, the other just wants to cruise by life and take pleasure at playing his harmonica. After Chuji helps Kenji out one night, Kenji feels honour bound to protect his new friend from dangers that lie ahead as he gets drawn into a plot of deceit and backstabbing. When people think Miike, they typically think of his confronting films like Audition, Visitor Q, or Ichi The Killer. Films like The Happiness of the Katakuris, The Bird People in China, Zebraman and Blues Harp show there's a diversity not always discussed. Blues Harp may not be well known, but it is a film of incredible maturity. Miike uses every technique in his storytelling arsenal to build on what is essentially a character study and make his audience care about his characters' fates. Tim, Bernie, and Maurice discuss Miike's career, as well as oral hygiene, the lengths some people will go to get to the top, confidence (there's a connection) and Little Walter."]

Edwards, David. "The Filter Bubble - Owen Jones And Con Coughlin." Media Lens (November 14, 2018) ["In a dream, the common sense rules and rationality of everyday life are, of course, suspended – we float to the top of the stairs, a cat smiles, a person is beheaded at the dinner table and the vegetables are served. In similar vein, Iraq was destroyed in a nakedly illegal oil grab, more than one million human beings were killed, and the 'mainstream' continued to treat the criminals responsible as respectable statespeople, and to take seriously their subsequent calls for 'humanitarian intervention' in oil-rich Libya. With Libya reduced to ruins, the same journalists dreamed on, treating the same criminals with the same respect as they sought yet one more regime change in Syria. This nightmare version of 'news' is maintained by a corporate 'filter bubble' that blocks facts, ideas and sources that challenge state-corporate control of politics, economics and culture. It is maintained by a mixture of ruthless high-level control and middle- and lower-level compromise, conformity and self-serving blindness."]

Fekete, Andrea. "The Top Censored News Stories of 2017 - 2018: # 16 $21 Trillion in Unaccounted-for Government Spending from 1998 to 2015." Project Censored (October 2, 2018)

Manning, Zander, Jessica Picard, and Jared Yellin. "The Top 25 Censored News Stories of 2017 - 2018: #17 “Model” Mississippi Curriculum Omits Civil Rights Movement from School Textbooks." Project Censored (October 2, 2018)

Youth Dialogic Cinephilia (Ongoing Archive)

Klymkiw, Greg, Paul Talbot and Mike White. "Mandingo (1975)." The Projection Booth #375 (March 14, 2018) ["We're heading to Falconhurst and looking at the unlikely hit film Mandingo (1975), the book series that informed it and its sequel, and the knock-offs in its wake. Richard Fleischer's film stars Ken Norton as Mede, the titular Mandingo, while James Mason and Perry King are the father and son who run Falconhurst, a slave-breeding plantation."]

Michael Benton: Thinking

Thinking by Michael Benton

It started out innocently enough. I began to think before social gatherings, now and then -- just to loosen up.

Inevitably, though, one thought led to another, and soon I was more than just a social thinker. I became concerned about America's global wars and the broad ranging effects of inequality on our democracy. I would ask others about these problems, but no one wanted to talk about it. This caused me to think about it more...

Soon, I began to think alone, "just to relax" I told myself this, but I knew it wasn't true. Thinking became more and more important to me, and finally I was thinking all the time. That was when things began to sour at home.

One evening, insisting that we turn off the finals of American Idol, I asked my partner about the meaning of life. My partner looked up from the I-phone while typing a message on a social media profile and yelled at me for being confrontational. My partner spent that night at a friend's house.

I began to think on the job. I knew that thinking and employment don't mix, but I couldn't stop myself. I began to avoid friends at lunchtime so I could read Karl Marx and Adam Smith in order to understand the origins of our capitalist system. I would return to the office dizzied and confused, asking, "What is it exactly we are doing here and how do we contribute to our community?" One day the boss called me in. He said, "Listen, I like you, and it hurts me to say this, but your thinking has become a real problem. If you don't stop thinking on the job, you'll have to find another job." This gave me a lot to think about.

I came home early after my conversation with the boss.

"Honey," I confessed, "I've been thinking..."

"I know you've been thinking," my partner said, "and I want a divorce!"

"But Honey, surely it's not that serious."

"It is serious," my partner said, lower lip quivering. "You think as much as college professors, and college professors don't make serious money, so if you keep on thinking, we won't have any money!"

"That's a faulty syllogism," I said impatiently.

My partner exploded in tears of rage and frustration, but I was in no mood to deal with the emotional drama.

"I'm going to the library," I snarled as I stomped out the door.

I headed for the library, in the mood for some Nietzsche.

I roared into the parking lot with Democracy Now playing and ran up to the big glass doors...They didn't open. The library was closed.

To this day, I believe that a Higher Power was looking out for me that night.

Leaning on the unfeeling glass, whimpering for Zarathustra, a poster caught my eye. "Friend, is heavy thinking ruining your life?" it asked. You probably recognize that line. It comes from the standard Thinker's Anonymous poster.

Which is why I am what I am today: a recovering thinker.

I never miss a TA meeting. We start off by telling each other everything is just fine and there is no need to question how our world is organized and run. Then we share experiences about how we avoided thinking since the last meeting. Luckily, my boss approved of my attempt at recovery, so I still have my job, and things are a lot better at home.

Life just seemed...easier, somehow, as soon as I stopped thinking.

I think the road to recovery is nearly complete for me.

My partner is ecstatic about my recovery.

Tonight I'm going to a Trump rally, he says we are doing "really, really great" and that makes me happy. I'm glad we have decisive leaders like him that encourage the people to avoid the dangers of thinking too much!

Dialogic Cinephilia - November 28, 2018

Such is the quandry when it comes to magic, that it is not an issue of strength but of balance. For too little power, and we become weak. Too much, and we become something else. -- Tieren Serense, Head Priest of the London Sanctuary (Schwab, V.E. A Darker Shade of Magic. Tor, 2015: 7.)

Barber, William. "Mississippi Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith Jokes About Hangings, But Her Policies Will Strangle the Poor." Democracy Now (November 26, 2018) ["Mississippi voters will head to the polls Tuesday in the state’s hotly contested runoff senate election, as incumbent Republican Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith faces off against Democrat Mike Espy. In a state that Donald Trump won by 20 percentage points two years ago, Espy is attempting to become Mississippi’s first African-American senator since Reconstruction. His opponent, incumbent Sen. Hyde-Smith, attended and graduated from an all-white segregationist high school and recently posed for photos with a Confederate Army cap and other Confederate artifacts. Earlier this month, a viral video showed Hyde-Smith praising a campaign supporter, saying, “If he invited me to a public hanging, I’d be on the front row.” Mississippi was once considered the lynching capital of the United States. We speak with Rev. Dr. William Barber, co-chair of the Poor People’s Campaign and president and senior lecturer of Repairers of the Breach. He recently traveled to Mississippi to get out the vote."]

---. "Tear Gassing Central American Migrants is Inhumane, Unconstitutional, Immoral." Democracy Now (November 26, 2018) ["U.S. border patrol officers fired tear gas into a crowd of desperate Central American asylum-seekers Sunday in Tijuana, Mexico as some tried to push their way through the heavily militarized border with the United States. Mothers and small children were left gagging and screaming as the tear gas spread. The migrants are from Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador, and are fleeing widespread violence, poverty and mass unemployment. We speak with Rev. Dr. William Barber, co-chair of the Poor People’s Campaign and president and senior lecturer of Repairers of the Breach."]

Brophy, Megan. "In Iowa, Pioneering Undergrad Workers Union Keeps Growing." Labor Notes (November 6, 2018)

Klein, Naomi. "The Game-Changing Promise of a Green New Deal." The Intercept (November 27, 2018)  ["If you are part of the economy’s winning class and funded by even bigger winners, as so many politicians are, then your attempts to craft climate legislation will likely be guided by the idea that change should be as minimal and unchallenging to the status quo as possible. After all, the status quo is working just fine for you and your donors. Leaders who are rooted in communities that are being egregiously failed by the current system, on the other hand, are liberated to take a very different approach. Their climate policies can embrace deep and systemic change — including the need for massive investments in public transit, affordable housing, and health care — because that kind of change is precisely what their bases need to thrive. As climate justice organizations have been arguing for many years now, when the people with the most to gain lead the movement, they fight to win."]

Pérez, Ana Cecilia. "Refusing to Hide: Migrants Find Power in Caravans." Yes! (November 26, 2018) ["Every step is a collective action to expose the failures of governments throughout the region. Their courageous, albeit dangerous, journey exposes the impact of U.S imperialism in countries where our government is directly implicated in multiple coups. They elucidate for us the trade policies that are grounded in economies of extraction, at the expense of local economies—all for the benefit of U.S. corporations. Images of parents carrying toddlers on their shoulders as they cross rivers and of mothers lying on sidewalks comforting their children are in sharp contrast with the narratives the 45th president of the United States conjures up as he continues to sow hate, division, and lies. Make no mistake: What is at stake here is our country’s values and our very own humanity as citizens and residents of the United States. Will we turn our backs on dispossessed families, or will we fight to uphold the aspirational principles on which this country was founded? The time has come to see Latin American nations not as “shithole countries,” but as real partners in the geopolitical arena. This means creating trade and foreign-relations policies that support alternative and sustainable economic development, local industries, and the creation of jobs with a living wage. Policies focused on people, the planet, and the well-being of all people. We all deserve that."]
Sunrise Movement ["Sunrise is a movement to stop climate change and create millions of good jobs in the process. We're building an army of young people to make climate change an urgent priority across America, end the corrupting influence of fossil fuel executives on our politics, and elect leaders who stand up for the health and well being of all people. We are ordinary young people who are scared about what the climate crisis means for the people and places we love. We are gathering in classrooms, living rooms, and worship halls across the country. Everyone has a role to play. Public opinion is already with us - if we unite by the millions we can turn this into political power and reclaim our democracy. We are not looking to the right or left. We look forward. Together, we will change this country and this world, sure as the sun rises each morning."]

West, Stephen. "Michel Foucault Pt. 3 - Power." Philosophize This (September 24, 2018)

Dialogic Cinephilia - November 26, 2018

The genuine heart of sadness comes from feeling that your nonexistent heart is full. You would like to spill your heart's blood, give your heart to others. For the warrior, this experience of sad and tender heart is what gives birth to fearlessness. Conventionally, being fearless means that you are not afraid or that, if someone hits you, you will hit him back. However, we are not talking about street-fighter level of fearlessness. Real fearlessness is the product of tenderness. It comes from letting the world tickle your heart, your raw and beautiful heart. You are willing to open up, without resistance or shyness, and face the world. You are willing to share your heart with others. (32)
... But then, as you experience this sadness more and more, you realize that human beings should be tender and open. So you no longer need to feel shy or embarrassed about being gentle. In fact your softness begins to become passionate. You would like to extend yourself to others and communicate with them. When tenderness evolves in that direction, then you can truly appreciate the world around you. (36) -- Trungpa, Chögyam. Shambhala: The Sacred Path of the Warrior. Shambhala, 2007.

Banuelas, Erika. "The Top 25 Censored News Stories of 2017 - 2018: #18 Adoption Agencies a Gateway for Child Exploitation." Project Censored (October 2, 2018)

Blue Velvet (USA: David Lynch, 1986) Dialogic Cinephilia (Ongoing Archive)

Heath, Roderick. "Blue Velvet (1986)." Ferdy on Films (October 22, 2018) ["Part of Lynch’s shrewd humour lies in his way of conceptualising evil, no matter how inflated and perverse, as something readily understandable to a young man like Jeffrey. Frank is a school bully inflated to the nth degree, with his coterie of giggling companions, existing purely to dominate and humiliate. At first Frank might seem too wilfully extreme, too bizarre a creation to offer social commentary. But Lynch makes clear when he glimpses Frank watching Dorothy perform and when he adopts his “well-dressed man” disguise he’s capable of acting sufficiently ordinary to move amongst daylight people. Normality is a guise he puts on but for him the pleasure of, and motive for, his criminal activities is the way they allow him to mostly dispense with his own, specific veil of behaviour, the one that stands between the inner, id-driven man-child that operates through whim and appetite and what it wants, alternating cruel tantrums and displays of jarring, fetishistic neediness that manifests in the need to control. His random habit of plucking out a facemask and huffing on some gaseous intoxicant makes him look like in turn vaguely insectoid and cyborg, a creation born in the primal age and just at home in a post-apocalyptic landscape. He casts Dorothy as lover, mother, slave, and psychic ashtray, needing to know only what it takes to make her conform to his will. It’s a siren song Jeffrey experiences too, the shocking mainlining thrill of walloping pretty white flesh and watching it turn purple. Lynch never tries to state whether Dorothy’s masochistic streak is a by-product of guilt and anxiety over her family or if it’s a more intricate aspect of her nature, and perhaps it doesn’t matter; everyone is the by-product of their grazings against other bodies and wills, forming and malformed. In the end Jeffrey seems to be just as compelled to place himself under Frank’s fist as her, as if he senses pain is a profound contract with reality that must be paid one way or another."]

Lim, Dennis. "Bernardo Bertolucci, Director of Last Tango in Paris, Dies at 77." The New York Times (November 26, 2018)

Mealer, Bryan. "This is what Trump’s caravan 'invasion' really looks like." The Guardian (November 26, 2018) ["Those walking to the US to seek asylum have been demonized by Trump, who sent more than 5,000 soldiers to await them at the border. Bryan Mealer traveled with the most vulnerable among them"]

Vasquez, Zach. "The Truth About Killer Robots: The Year's Most Terrifying Documentary." The Guardian (November 26, 2018)

Blue Velvet (USA: David Lynch, 1986)

Blue Velvet (USA: David Lynch, 1986: 120 mins)

Cleaver, Sarah Kathryn and Mary Wild. "Fashion Films Episode 5: Fashion & Fetish." Projections #5 (April 3, 2019) ["Sarah and Mary discuss fetishism, fashion and wigs in Ken Russell’s Crimes of Passion (1984) and David Lynch’s Blue Velvet (1986)."]

Eggert, Brian. "Blue Velvet (1986)." Deep Focus (January 27, 2013)

Freeman, Sara. "The Creatures: Lynchian Women and Mulholland Drive." Keyframe (October 30, 2016)

Golum, Caroline, Lady P. and Matt Prigge. "Blue Velvet and Auteurist Television." Flixwise #69 (August 29, 2017)

Greene, Liz. "David Lynch's Blue Velvet and The Elephant Man." Must See Films (June 2015)

Grozdaniz, Lidija. "Möbius, Frank Lloyd Wright, and the 1950s: David Lynch As the Ultimate Architect's Film Director." Architizer (July 14, 2014)

Heath, Roderick. "Blue Velvet (1986)." Ferdy on Films (October 22, 2018) ["Part of Lynch’s shrewd humour lies in his way of conceptualising evil, no matter how inflated and perverse, as something readily understandable to a young man like Jeffrey. Frank is a school bully inflated to the nth degree, with his coterie of giggling companions, existing purely to dominate and humiliate. At first Frank might seem too wilfully extreme, too bizarre a creation to offer social commentary. But Lynch makes clear when he glimpses Frank watching Dorothy perform and when he adopts his “well-dressed man” disguise he’s capable of acting sufficiently ordinary to move amongst daylight people. Normality is a guise he puts on but for him the pleasure of, and motive for, his criminal activities is the way they allow him to mostly dispense with his own, specific veil of behaviour, the one that stands between the inner, id-driven man-child that operates through whim and appetite and what it wants, alternating cruel tantrums and displays of jarring, fetishistic neediness that manifests in the need to control. His random habit of plucking out a facemask and huffing on some gaseous intoxicant makes him look like in turn vaguely insectoid and cyborg, a creation born in the primal age and just at home in a post-apocalyptic landscape. He casts Dorothy as lover, mother, slave, and psychic ashtray, needing to know only what it takes to make her conform to his will. It’s a siren song Jeffrey experiences too, the shocking mainlining thrill of walloping pretty white flesh and watching it turn purple. Lynch never tries to state whether Dorothy’s masochistic streak is a by-product of guilt and anxiety over her family or if it’s a more intricate aspect of her nature, and perhaps it doesn’t matter; everyone is the by-product of their grazings against other bodies and wills, forming and malformed. In the end Jeffrey seems to be just as compelled to place himself under Frank’s fist as her, as if he senses pain is a profound contract with reality that must be paid one way or another."]

Jennings, Tom. "David Lynch, Contemporary Cinema and Social Class (2000)." libcom (March 7, 2008)

Kuersten, Erich. "The Primal Father (CinemArchetypes #8)." Acidemic (March 19, 2012)

Lim, Dennis. "David Lynch's Elusive Language." The New Yorker (October 28, 2015)

LoBrutto, Vincent. "Dream State: Blue Velvet." Becoming Film Literate: The Art and Craft of Motion Pictures. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2005: 46-52. [BCTC Library: PN1994 L595 2005]

Macaulay, Scott. "NOW IT’S DARK… THE “BLUE VELVET” PROJECT." Filmmaker Magazine (August 7, 2011)

Martin, Adrian. "The Misleading Man: Dennis Hopper." Film International 5.1 (2007). [Professor has copy for students]

Orr, Niela. "It Is Happening Again: David Lynch’s Twin Peaks returns—to its white fantasia." The Baffler (June 4, 2017)

Rombes, Nicholas. "The Blue Velvet Project." Filmmaker Magazine (August 8, 2011: Ongoing)

Sammon, Paul M. "Blue Velvet." The Projection Booth #104 (March 5, 2013)

Dialogic Cinephilia - November 21, 2018

Imagine if all of the people that opposed Trump's agenda boycotted Black Friday? "Blackout for Human Rights (Blackout)’s fifth annual #BlackoutBlackFriday, taking place on November 23, 2018, continues to be part of a nationwide call to action encouraging individuals to refrain from shopping to protest social and economic injustice in the U.S. and instead engage in cultural activism." What kind of message would that send?
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Documenting Hate: New American NAZIs Frontline (November 20, 2018) ["In the wake of the deadly anti-Semitic attack at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, FRONTLINE and ProPublica present a new investigation into white supremacist groups in America – in particular, a neo-Nazi group, Atomwaffen Division, that has actively recruited inside the U.S. military. Continuing FRONTLINE and ProPublica’s reporting on violent white supremacists in the U.S. (which has helped lead to multiple arrests), this joint investigation shows the group’s terrorist objectives and how it gained strength after the 2017 Charlottesville rally."]

Giridharadas, Anand. "The Elite Charade of Changing the World." Ralph Nader Radio Hour (November 3, 2018) ["Ralph welcomes journalist and author, Anand Giridharadas to talk about his book, Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World, which argues that rich “do-gooders” don’t really want to change the system that made them rich."]

Gross, Larry. "Love is Colder Than Death: Luca Guadagnino on Suspiria." Filmmaker (September 17, 2018)

Snow, Izzy. "The Top 25 Censored News Stories of 2017 - 2018: #19 People Bussed across US to Cut Cities’ Homeless Populations." Project Censored (October 2, 2018)

Thompson, A.C. "New American Nazis: Inside the White Supremacist Movement That Fueled Pittsburgh Synagogue Shooting." Democracy Now (November 20, 2018) ["Neo-Nazis are on the rise in America. Nearly a month after a gunman killed eleven Jewish worshipers at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, we look at the violent hate groups that helped fuel the massacre. On the same day that shooter Robert Bowers opened fire in the synagogue, a neo-Nazi named Edward Clark that Bowers had been communicating with online took his own life in Washington, D.C. The man’s brother, Jeffrey Clark, has since been arrested on weapons charges. The brothers were both linked to the violent white supremacist group Atomwaffen. We speak with A.C. Thompson, correspondent for FRONTLINE PBS and reporter for ProPublica. His investigation “Documenting Hate: New American Nazis” premieres tonight on PBSstations and online."]

"An early and influential statement of identity politics (as this tendency quickly became known) was 'A Black Feminist Statement,' published in 1977 and written by the Combahee River Collective: 'We believe that the most profound and potentially the most radical politics come directly out of our own identity, as opposed to working to end somebody else's oppression... We reject pedestals, queenhood, and walking ten paces behind. To be recognized as human, levelly human, is enough.' They proposed an integrated perspective on sex, race, and class, and criticized both lesbian separatism and 'any type of biological determinism.' This is important to remember, because identity politics became increasingly identified-- often unfairly, and by both members of the right and left-- as the very ideology of separatism and immutable difference. Identity politics, if we listen to the original voices, was a general call to become 'levelly human,' but to do so as particular persons with particular histories." - Tucker, Scott. The Queer Question: Essays on Desire and Democracy (South End Press, 1997: 72)

Expanded from Haruki Murakami’s short story “Barn Burning,” the sixth feature from Korean master Lee Chang-dong, known best in the U.S. for such searing, emotional dramas as Secret Sunshine (NYFF45) and Poetry (NYFF48), begins by tracing a romantic triangle of sorts: Jongsu (Yoo Ah-in), an aspiring writer, becomes involved with a woman he knew from childhood, Haemi (Jun Jong-seo), who is about to embark on a trip to Africa. She returns some weeks later with a fellow Korean, the Gatsby-esque Ben (Steven Yeun), who has a mysterious source of income and a very unusual hobby. A tense, haunting multiple-character study, the film accumulates a series of unanswered questions and unspoken motivations to conjure a totalizing mood of uncertainty and quietly bends the contours of the thriller genre to brilliant effect. A Well Go USA release. - Film Society Lincoln Center (2018)

In the impressive directorial debut from actor Paul Dano (There Will Be Blood), a carefully wrought adaptation of Richard Ford’s 1990 novel, a family comes apart one loosely stitched seam at a time. We are in the lonely expanses of the American west in the mid-’60s. An affable man (Jake Gyllenhaal), down on his luck, runs off to fight the wildfires raging in the mountains. His wife (Carey Mulligan) strikes out blindly in search of security and finds herself running amok. It is left to their young adolescent son Joe (Ed Oxenbould) to hold the center. Co-written by Zoe Kazan, Wildlife is made with a sensitivity and at a level of craft that are increasingly rare in movies. An IFC Films release. -- Film Society Lincoln Center (2018)

Kore-eda’s Cannes Palme d’Or winner is a heartrending glimpse into an often invisible segment of Japanese society: those struggling to stay afloat in the face of crushing poverty. On the margins of Tokyo, a most unusual “family”—a collection of societal castoffs united by their shared outsiderhood and fierce loyalty to one another—survives by petty stealing and grifting. When they welcome into their fold a young girl who’s been abused by her parents, they risk exposing themselves to the authorities and upending their tenuous, below-the-radar existence. The director’s latest masterful, richly observed human drama makes the quietly radical case that it is love—not blood—that defines a family. An NYFF56 selection. A Magnolia Pictures release. -- Film Society Lincoln Center (2018)