Thursday, September 27, 2018

Dialogic Cinephilia - September 27, 2018

MB here - responding to a question about feminism:

Feminism doesn't demand absolute equality in every sense, at all times, like the world of Kurt Vonnegut's "Harrison Bergeron" (a classic story of PC mania)... rather it is a simple demand for equal opportunity, value and respect. There are varying abilities in all people and the fact that some men may be physically stronger than some women is no more important than the equally true fact that some women are stronger than some men. I respect science, more and more as the Trump government seeks to discredit it, but when thinking about gender even science has often fell for these gender myths and I think we should avoid a deterministic stance (e.g. nature vs nurture).

Feminism is an important word and theory. It is just as valid today as it was in the past, as we are continuously assaulted by the decisions of backward-looking theocrats; the discrimination of American corporations who think of women as servants not leaders; the continuing culture of physical intimidation at a local level and on a global scale; emphasis on body as sole factor in a women's value because she only needs to worry about one thing; or where women's history/perspective is generally ignored unless it supports a patriarchal view.

I'm a man, maybe even chauvinistic in my attitudes... I was raised in the 70s and 80s ... but damn, how blind must a person be to not recognize a continuing system that grossly favors men overall and that systematically attempts to cover up this reality.

There are abusive feminists, they are human, but you cannot discount an entire movement for the actions of a few members. And I am under no illusion that the world will simply become better if women were placed in power as they are just as capable of cruelty and oppression. This is simply a recognition of systematic discrimination in our society and the call to fight it.

I do not claim gender as a privileged position and recognize that it needs to be put into play with a multitude of other perspectives to understand the relationships of power (most definitely perspectives of class, race, sexuality and place--especially when they are used in a deterministic factor to perpetuate discrimination against groups of people).



------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Hertel-Fernandez, Alexander, Caroline Tervo and Theda Skocpol. "How the Koch brothers built the most powerful rightwing group you've never heard of." The Guardian (September 26, 2018) ["In America, wealthy people have always thrown their weight around to influence elections and policy. But what is newer and more portentous in the early 21st century, especially at the state level, is the rise of organized big donor collectives through which hundreds of billionaires and millionaires invest in organization-building to remake the very terrain on which US elections and government activities play out. Organized political mega-donors can get much more leverage through persistent organizations than from scattered, one-time contributions to particular politicians."]

Jacobson, Jodi. "Senate Aides Knew of Second Kavanaugh Sexual Assault Claim & Tried to Rush His Confirmation." Democracy Now (September 24, 2018) ["Senator Dianne Feinstein is calling for the immediate postponement of the nomination proceedings of Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh after a second woman has come forward alleging sexual misconduct by the judge. Deborah Ramirez, a former classmate of Kavanaugh’s at Yale University, has accused him of exposing himself and thrusting his penis into her face during a college party in a dorm room. Ramirez spoke on the record to The New Yorker and is now calling on the FBI to investigate her allegations. The New Yorker revealed Republican Senate aides learned of Ramirez’s allegations last week and responded by trying to quickly move Kavanaugh’s nomination ahead before the allegations became public. This comes as Dr. Christine Blasey Ford has agreed to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday about her allegations that Kavanaugh attempted to rape her when she was 15 years old and he was 17 years old. Kavanaugh has denied both accusations." Parts two: "“Survivors Must Be Heard”: 1,100 Alumnae of Dr. Blasey Ford’s H.S. Demand FBI Investigate Kavanaugh."]

"Kindergarten Suspensions: Yes. It's a Thing." Have You Heard #3 (2016) ["Have You Heard heads to Boston for a look at the controversial trend of kindergarten suspension. We go behind the data to bring you the story of a mother and a five-year-old boy who, in his first four months as a kindergartner, was suspended 16 times. Hard to imagine? His mother thinks so too as she struggles to understand how her bright, creative little boy could end up in so much trouble so quickly."]

The Most Perfect Album: 27 Songs about the 27 Amendments by Various Artists (Mix on Youtube:  September 17, 2018) ["More Perfect, a Radiolab spinoff podcast about American democracy, commissioned acclaimed musicians and artists from around the world to write original songs inspired by each of the 27 amendments to the U.S. Constitution. “The mission of this album is to take these sometimes forgotten words and animate them through the power of music. These 27 amendments not only outline our basic rights as Americans, but they also show a country changing, evolving, re-imagining itself. Striving—and not always succeeding—to be better. These songs are a small way to say that these words matter. We’re thrilled to bring listeners this music in this critical moment.” — Jad Abumrad"]

Roberts-Miller, Patricia. "What’s wrong with the 'women should be afraid that their sons will be accused of rape' meme." (Aacademic/Personal website: September 24, 2018)

Turse, Nick. "Pentagon Stands by Cameroon — Despite Forensic Analysis Showing Its Soldiers Executed Women and Children." The Intercept (September 27, 2018)

"Waterfall Trip, Volume 3." Kentucky Waterfalls (2018)











“Beloved Pan and all ye other gods who haunt this place, give me beauty in the inward soul, and may the outward and the inner man be at one.” ― Socrates (in Plato's Phaedrus)


Monday, September 24, 2018

Dialogic Cinephilia - September 25, 2018

Anyone who believes that every individual film must present a "balanced" picture, knows nothing about either balance or pictures. -- Edward R. Murrow  [MB: I'm always mystified when someone screams out (verbally or in print) "that is biased" and I probably equally mystify them when I respond to their accusation: "of course it is."]

"Believing is seeing and not the other way around." -- Errol Morris

35 Shots of Rum (France/Germany: Claire Denis, 2008: 100 mins) Dialogic Cinephilia (Ongoing Archive)

Benton, Michael. "Recommended Films of 2016." Letterboxd (Ongoing)





LePire, Bobby. "Porcupine Lake." Film Threat (September 20, 2018)

Rosenthal, Caitlin C. "How Slavery Inspired Modern Business Management." Boston Review of Books (August 20, 2018)

Rubenstein, Richard L. The Cunning of History: The Holocaust and the American Future. Harper Torchbooks, 1987.


One of my all time favorite songs - sing with it and think through it - it always makes me feel better :)









The truth must be adjusted to fit the need. ... The aim of propaganda is not to try to pass judgement on conflicting rights, giving each its due, but exclusively to emphasize the right which we are asserting. Propaganda must not investigate the truth objectively, and, in so far as it is favorable to the other side, present it according to the theoretical rules of justice; but it must present only that aspect of the truth which is favorable to its own side. 
The receptive powers of the masses are very limited, and their understanding is feeble. ... All effective propaganda must be confined to a few bare essentials and there must be expressed as far as possible in stereotypical formulas. 
These slogans should be persistently repeated until the very last individual has come to grasp the idea that has been put forward ... the greater scope of the message that has to be presented, the more necessary it is for the propaganda to discover that plan of action which is psychologically the most efficient. -- Adolph Hitler, Mein Kampf  (cited in Combs, J.E. and D. Nimmo. The New Propaganda: The Dictatorship of Palaver in Contemporary Politics. Longman, 1993.) 









New Accuser Emerges Alleging Kavanaugh Assault from Rising Up With Sonali on Vimeo.



Thursday, September 20, 2018

35 Shots of Rum (France/Germany: Claire Denis, 2008)





35 Shots of Rum (France/Germany: Claire Denis, 2008: 100 mins)

When is a rice cooker more than just a rice cooker? When it’s in the masterful hands of Claire Denis, who somehow transforms it into a moving metaphor for the evolving relationship between a Parisian train conductor (Alex Descas) and his devoted twenty-something daughter (Mati Diop) as he gently nudges her out of the nest and each tests the waters of new relationships. Warmed by the ember-glow of Godard’s beautifully burnished cinematography, Denis’s delicately bittersweet take on the Ozu-style family drama conveys worlds of meaning and emotion—attraction, heartache, loss, hope—in a mere glance, a gesture, and, yes, a kitchen appliance. -- The Female Gaze (2018) 

Azevedo, Luis. "The Sensual World of Claire Denis." Little White Lies (April 15, 2019) ["Filtering the cinematic landscape of this master filmmaker through the five senses."]

Dooley, Kath. "Foreign Bodies, Community and Trauma in the Films of Claire Denis: Beau Travail (1999), 35 Rhums (2008) and White Material (2009)." Screening the Past #37 (September 2013)

Ebert, Roger. "35 Shots of Rum." Roger Ebert (January 20, 2010)

Funderburg, Christopher, et al. "Claire Denis." Wrong Reel #122 (April 3, 2016)

Gee, Felicity. "Claire Denis." The Cinematologist #61 (April 19, 2018) ["The episode covers a range of topics including aesthetics and feminism, the canonisation of Beau Travail, as well as the new film and how it fits into her body of work. Music in the episode comes from some of the collaborations Denis has undertaken with the band Tindersticks."]

Goldsmith, Leo. "Claire Denis' Early Career." Reverse Shot (June 26, 2009)

Hughes, Darren. "High Life and the 'Idea of a Claire Denis Film.'" Notebook (April 16, 2019)

Hughes, Darren and Michael Leary. "Claire Denis." Movie Mezzanine (2015)

Lee, Kevin B. "Essential Viewing: Claire Denis on 35 Shots of Rum." (Posted on Vimeo: February 2017)

---. "Essential Viewing: Roger Ebert on 35 Shots of Rum Keyframe (August 9, 2011)

Nayman, Adam. "The Major and the Minor: 35 Shots of Rum." Reverse Shot #25 (2009)

---. "On the Nightshift: An Interview with Claire Denis." Reverse Shot (June 26, 2009)

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

Sarmiento, José. "The Strangers of Claire Denis: Her cinema speaks of the borders that divide humanity, and the people who cross them." Keyframe (March 24, 2017)

Swinney, Jacob T. "12 Essential Women Cinematographers." Keyframe (August 10, 2016)

Walton, Saige. "Cinema and Sensation: French Film and the Art of Transgression by Martine Beugnet." Senses of Cinema #50 (April 2009) ["Those familiar with French director Claire Denis will be aware of the exquisite sensuality of her cinema. Whether coming together with another body in the world through the shared space and flesh of desire, or being driven apart from others by personal and sociopolitical circumstance, bodies – their gestures, bites and kisses, alternately languid or energetic movements, postures, habits and rituals – are the very “stuff” and substance of the film experience here. Given her privileging of the senses and her amenability to, as well as considered dialogue with, philosophers of the body, Denis is at the forefront of a number of contemporary directors (by no means exclusive to France, if we consider the work of figures such as Hou Hsiao-hsien, David Lynch or Wong Kar-Wai) who are generating much interest from sensually alert film scholars. Adrian Martin, for instance, identifies “the bedrock of Denis’ cinema [as] the flesh”, while Elena del Río comments that the “film body” of the cinema itself becomes a “sensation producing machine” in Denis, as if each film were “sending ripples of affect and thought across a diversity of its movements”, independent of the body of the viewer. The arresting materiality that infuses Denis forces us to look anew at sensory encounters with the cinema."]






Dialogic Cinephilia - September 20, 2018

We must suffer alone. But we can still reach out our arms to our similarly tortured, fractured, and above all else, anxious neighbors, as if to say, in the kindest way possible: 'I know ...' -- Alain de Botton's Book of Life: Developing Emotional Intelligence 


When he was US commander in Afghanistan, General David Petraeus declared what he called "a war of perception... conducted continuously using the news media". What really mattered was not the facts but the way the story played in the United States. The undeclared enemy was, as always, an informed and critical public at home. 
Nothing has changed. In the 1970s, I met Leni Riefenstahl, Hitler's film-maker, whose propaganda mesmerised the German public. 
She told me the "messages" of her films were dependent not on "orders from above", but on the "submissive void" of an uninformed public. 
"Did that include the liberal, educated bourgeoisie?" I asked.

"Everyone," she said. "Propaganda always wins, if you allow it." 
-- "Guest Media Alert by John Pilger: 'Hold the front page. The reporters are missing'" (September 20, 2018)

Darden, Jeneé interviews Jeanne Theoharis. "A More Beautiful and Terrible History Corrects the Fables Told of the Civil Rights Movement." Los Angeles Review of Books (September 16, 2018)

Edwards, David and David Cromwell. "Anatomy of a Propaganda Blitz." Propaganda Blitz: How the Corporate Media Distort Reality. Pluto Press, 2018: 1-19.

Mace, Ryan. "'A Matter of Life and Death': : Trump Admin Slashes Refugee Cap to Historic Low, Imperiling Thousands." Democracy Now (September 19, 2018) ["The Trump administration has once again slashed the number of refugees allowed to resettle in the United States. On Monday, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced the new cap on refugees would be a historic low of just 30,000 next year, down from the current level of 45,000. The actual number of refugees allowed in to the country is expected to be even lower than the 30,000 cap. Monday’s announcement represents the lowest ceiling any president has imposed on the U.S. refugee program since its creation in 1980. Under President Obama, the refugee cap reached 110,000. For more on the Trump administration’s refugee policy, we speak with Ryan Mace, refugee specialist for Amnesty International USA."]

Maguire, Mairead. "Demonization of Russia in a New Cold War Era." Counterpunch (September 17, 2018)

Olenick, Michael. "Debunking Another Misleading Gun Study." Naked Capitalism (September 12, 2018)

Smith, Yves. "Ending the Secrecy of the Student Debt Crisis." Naked Capitalism (September 16, 2018)


Midway upon the journey of our life
I found myself within a forest dark,
For the straightforward path had been lost.
--Dante Alighieri, Divine Comedy: Inferno, Song 1 (1320)







The Journey by Mary Oliver (in Dream Work: 1986)
One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice --
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
"Mend my life!"
each voice cried.
But you didn't stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voice behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do --
determined to save
the only life that you could save.

Wednesday, September 19, 2018

Dialogic Cinephilia - September 19, 2018


The Worm's Waking by Rumi (1207 - 1273)

This is how a human being can change:
there's a worm addicted to eating
grape leaves.
                         Suddenly he wakes up,
call it grace, whatever, something
wakes him, and he's no longer
a worm.
                He's the entire vineyard,
and the orchard too, the fruit, the trunks,
a growing wisdom and joy
that doesn't need
to devour.

Coleman Barks, Tr., The Essential Rumi (San Fransico: Harper Collins, 1995)

Feitlowitz, Marguerite. "A Lexicon of Terror: Argentina and the Legacies of Torture." The New York Times (Reproduction of Ch. 1 from the book of the same name)

Kelley, Robin D.G. "Sorry, Not Sorry." Boston Review (September 13, 2018)

Kempenaar, Adam and Josh Larsen. "BlacKkKlansman / Top 5 Spike Lee Shots." Filmspotting #693 (August 17, 2018) ["Master filmmaker, trickster, provocateur, Spike Lee has been making bold and timely films for over three decades now. And with his latest, BLACKkKLANSMAN, he's also made one of his best. On this week's show, Adam and Josh give Lee the career retrospective treatment with the Filmspotting Top 5: Spike Lee Shots, along with a review of the outstanding and thought-provoking KLANSMAN."]

Popova, Maria. "What Power Really Means: Cheryl Strayed Reads Adrienne Rich’s Homage to Marie Curie." Brain Pickings (April 24, 2018)

Santini, Antonio and Dan Sickle. "Dina." Film School (October 13, 2017) ["DINA, an outspoken and eccentric 49-year-old in suburban Philadelphia, invites her fiancé Scott, a Walmart door greeter, to move in with her. Having grown up neurologically diverse in a world blind to the value of their experience, the two are head-over-heels for one another, but shacking up poses a new challenge.Getting married in a few weeks and there’s still so much to do. She has to move her boyfriend, Scott, from his parents’ house to her apartment, and settle him in to only the second home he’s ever had, all while juggling his schedule as an early morning Walmart door greeter.She has to get her dress, confirm arrangements with the venue, and make peace with her family, who remain nervous for their beloved DINA, after the death of her first husband and the string of troubled relationships that followed. Throughout it all, in the face of obstacles large and small, DINA, remains indomitable. She’s overcome tragedy and found the man she wants and is bent on building the life for herself that she believes she deserves. DINA captures the cadences and candid conversations of a relationship that reexamines the notion of love on-screen. DINA is unstoppable, a force of nature, and as the star of her own life story, she’s an unconventional movie protagonist the likes of which hasn’t been seen before. Co-directors Antonio Santini and Dan Sickle join us to talk about their empathetic, moving and enveloping documentary."]

Strang, Pekka. "Tom of Finland." Film School (October 15, 2017) ["This stirring biopic follows the life of the artist Touko Laaksonen (Pekka Strang), known to the world as Tom of Finland, whose proudly erotic drawings shaped the fantasies of a generation of gay men, influencing art and fashion before crossing over into the wider cultural consciousness. But who was the man behind the leather? After serving in the army in WWII, Touko returned to repressive Finnish society of the 1950s, haunted by traumatic experiences. Moving in with his affectionate but unenlightened sister Kaija (Jessica Grabowsky), he fell in love with her lodger, handsome dancer Veli (Lauri Tiklanen), who Kaija also fancied. Unable to express his feelings openly, Touko poured them into his drawings, creating his vision of the hypermasculine leatherman. Soon his art was famous under his secret pseudonym, but getting it published was a struggle that took Touko to California, where he and his art were finally embraced amid the sexual revolution of the 1970s.Tom’s story is one of love, courage and perseverance, mirroring the gay liberation movement for which his leather-clad studs served as a defiant emblem. Finland’s Official Selection for Best Foreign Language Film consideration at the 90th Academy Awards. Actor Pekka Strang joins us for a conversation on his nuanced and winning portrayal of an iconic artist and unexpected champion of equal rights for the LGBTQ community."]





Fieldnotes: Annette Kuhn interviewed by Catherine Grant from SCMS on Vimeo.

















"To conquer a beast, we must first make it beautiful." - Ancient Chinese Proverb [Quoted on the inside cover of Sarah Wilson's first, we make the beast beautiful: a new journey through anxiety (Dey St., 2018)]







Saturday, September 15, 2018

Dialogic Cinephilia - September 15, 2018

Andrews, Benedict. "Una." Film School (October 13, 2017) ["UNA, based on David Harrower’s play ‘Blackbird’ follows a young woman’s journey to reclaim her past. Fifteen years earlier, UNA ran away with an older man, Ray, a crime for which he was arrested and imprisoned. When she comes across a photo of him in a trade magazine, UNA tracks him down and turns up at his workplace. Her abrupt arrival threatens to destroy Ray’s new life and derail her stability. Unspoken secrets and buried memories surface as Una and Ray sift through the wreckage of the past. Their confrontation raises unanswered questions and unresolved longings. It will shake them both to the core. UNA gazes into the heart of a devastating form of love and asks if redemption is possible. Bolstered by the remarkable performances of Rooney Mara and Ben Mendelson, UNA rips at the fragile facade of two irreparably damaged people forced to reconcile entangled their past. Director Benedict Andrews talks about the making of his complex, intimate and relentlessly raw tale of abuse, and unresolved emotion."]





Auberjonis, Remy and Kate Nowlin. "Blood Stripe." Film School (October 13, 2017)

Bohatch, Emily. "SC officials won’t evacuate medium-security prison despite mandatory order." The State (September 11, 2018)

Goro, El and Stephanie Wiley. "Fright Night (1985) and Re-Animator (1985)." Talk Without Rhythm (October 22, 2017)

"L.A. Breakdown, a Hitman In Crisis: Michael Mann’s Collateral."  Cinephilia and Beyond (ND)

Publius, Gaius. "Big Oil Seeks Billions from U.S. Government to Protect It From…Climate Change." Down With Tyranny (September 10, 2018)

Roberts, Tim. "What Was also Wrong About the Claim that Andrew Gillum’s Election as Florida’s Governor 'Would Monkey This Up.'" History News Network (September 9, 2018)

Rose, Steve. "'We can't wait for Hollywood to change' - the directors reframing black history." The Guardian (April 1, 2017) ["From Raoul Peck’s I Am Not Your Negro to Ava DuVernay’s 13th, the factual film-makers tackling race in the era of Black Lives Matter."]









PICK ONE from Catherine Grant on Vimeo.



Wednesday, September 12, 2018

Dialogic Cinephilia - September 12, 2018


Angela Y. Davis: African-American Studies/Critical Theory/Feminism/Gender Studies/History/Marxism/Philosophy/Prison Abolition Dialogic Cinephilia  (Ongoing Archive)

Blackmon, Douglas A. Slavery By Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black People in America from the Civil War to WWII. NY: Doubleday, 2008.

Criminology/Policing/Crime/Prisons Dialogic Cinephilia (Ongoing Archive)

Lombardi, Amy J. "On the Origins of the term 'Doublespeak.'" The Daily Doublespeak (September 4, 2008)

Michelle Alexander: Civil Rights Lawyer/Legal Studies/Social Justice Dialogic Cinephilia (Ongoing Archive)

Ng, Alan. "Rodents of Unusual Size." Film Threat (September 12, 2018)

Slavery and Its Legacies ["The Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition is pleased to announce “Slavery and Its Legacies,” a podcast series featuring visiting scholars, activists, and others about their contributions to the understanding of slavery past and present and its ongoing role in the development of the modern world. New episodes will be available every other Monday."]

Slavery By Another Name (PBS Documentary, 2012: 84 minutes) ["Slavery by Another Name “resets” our national clock with a singular astonishing fact: Slavery in America didn’t end 150 years ago, with Abraham Lincoln’s 1863 Emancipation Proclamation. Based on Douglas A. Blackmon’s Pulitzer Prize-winning book, the film illuminates how in the years following the Civil War, insidious new forms of forced labor emerged in the American South, persisting until the onset of World War II."]

Social Movements/Resistance Dialogic Cinephilia (Ongoing Archive)











Sunday, September 9, 2018

Slurring Bee 15

Also need 15 absurd/quirky warm up questions

1st Round: warm-up question followed by a word
2nd Round: 3 words in succession for each contestant
3rd Round: Round-robin until we have a winner (keep track of last three - the order they come in)
3 mispelled words and a contestant is out

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.

417) orgulous

418) circuitous

419) quintessance

420) xenophobia

421) fungible

422) taciturn

423) symposium

424) quiddity

425) imperturbable






Saturday, September 8, 2018

Beau travail (France: Claire Denis, 1999: 92 mins)



Beau travail (France: Claire Denis, 1999: 92 mins)

Denis’s loose retelling of Billy Budd, set among a troop of Foreign Legionnaires stationed in the Gulf of Djibouti, is one of her finest films, an elemental story of misplaced longing and frustrated desire. Beneath a scorching sun, shirtless young men exercise to the strains of Benjamin Britten, under the watchful eye of Denis Lavant’s officer Galoup, their ritualized movements simmering with barely suppressed violence. When a handsome recruit wins the favor of the regiment’s commander, cracks start to appear in Galoup’s fragile composure. In the tense, tightly disciplined atmosphere of military life, Denis found an ideal outlet for two career-long concerns: the quiet agony of repressing one’s emotions and the terror of finally letting loose. -- The Female Gaze (2018)


The power of Denis’s cinema flows from the fact that it fully addresses both mind and body: the whole spectator. Beau travail is, on the one hand, a cerebral film: its narrative is rigorously minimal, it features little expository dialogue, and its elegant ellipses sustain a state of mystery. But at the same time, it is a film with an audiovisual intensity that stirs the senses. It belongs to what Martine Beugnet calls a “cinema of sensation”—works that have a visceral, bodily effect on us. Denis and her longtime cinematographer, Agnès Godard, are masters of vivid and tactile image-making, capturing equally the elemental force of the sun-saturated East African landscape and the faces and bodies of the legionnaires in all their variety of race and ethnicity. - Girish Shambu (October 5, 2020)


Azevedo, Luis. "The Sensual World of Claire Denis." Little White Lies (April 15, 2019) ["Filtering the cinematic landscape of this master filmmaker through the five senses."]

Burchett, William, Brian Risselada and Josh Ryan. "Claire Denis." Syndrome and a Cinema #3 (October 17, 2011)

Chan, Andrew. "Men at Play: Beau Travail." Reverse Shot #29 (2009)

Cooper, Julia. "This Is the Rhythm of My Life: Failure in Claire Denis’ Beau Travail." cléo 1.3 (July 28, 2013)

Dooley, Kath. "Foreign Bodies, Community and Trauma in the Films of Claire Denis: Beau Travail (1999), 35 Rhums (2008) and White Material (2009)." Screening the Past #37 (September 2013)

Funderburg, Christopher, et al. "Claire Denis." Wrong Reel #122 (April 3, 2016)

Gee, Felicity. "Claire Denis." The Cinematologist #61 (April 19, 2018) ["The episode covers a range of topics including aesthetics and feminism, the canonisation of Beau Travail, as well as the new film and how it fits into her body of work. Music in the episode comes from some of the collaborations Denis has undertaken with the band Tindersticks."]

Goldsmith, Leo. "Claire Denis' Early Career." Reverse Shot (June 26, 2009)

Hughes, Darren. "High Life and the 'Idea of a Claire Denis Film.'" Notebook (April 16, 2019)

Hughes, Darren and Michael Leary. "Claire Denis." Movie Mezzanine (2015)

Ogundare, Tope. "Male Love Through Female Eyes - Five films about men, each directed by a woman. What do we learn?" Keyframe (March 24, 2016)

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

Reardon, Kiva. "Claire Denis and Objects of Desire." Keyframe (March 3, 2016)

Reichert, Jeff. "The Great Beyond: Beau Travail." Reverse Shot #29 (2009)

Sarmiento, José. "The Strangers of Claire Denis: Her cinema speaks of the borders that divide humanity, and the people who cross them." Keyframe (March 24, 2017)

Tracz, Tamara. Beau Travail Senses of Cinema (February 2007)

Vicari, Justin. "Colonial fictions: Le Petit Soldat and its revisionist sequel, Beau Travail." Jump Cut #50 (2008)

Walton, Saige. "Cinema and Sensation: French Film and the Art of Transgression by Martine Beugnet." Senses of Cinema #50 (April 2009) ["Those familiar with French director Claire Denis will be aware of the exquisite sensuality of her cinema. Whether coming together with another body in the world through the shared space and flesh of desire, or being driven apart from others by personal and sociopolitical circumstance, bodies – their gestures, bites and kisses, alternately languid or energetic movements, postures, habits and rituals – are the very “stuff” and substance of the film experience here. Given her privileging of the senses and her amenability to, as well as considered dialogue with, philosophers of the body, Denis is at the forefront of a number of contemporary directors (by no means exclusive to France, if we consider the work of figures such as Hou Hsiao-hsien, David Lynch or Wong Kar-Wai) who are generating much interest from sensually alert film scholars. Adrian Martin, for instance, identifies “the bedrock of Denis’ cinema [as] the flesh”, while Elena del Río comments that the “film body” of the cinema itself becomes a “sensation producing machine” in Denis, as if each film were “sending ripples of affect and thought across a diversity of its movements”, independent of the body of the viewer. The arresting materiality that infuses Denis forces us to look anew at sensory encounters with the cinema."]











Thursday, September 6, 2018

Dialogic Cinephilia - September 6, 2018

What are “thoughts,” and what are “things”? and how are they connected?… Is there a common stuff out of which all facts are made?… Which is the most real kind of reality? What binds all things into one universe?
-- Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life (2011)






Anderson, Jake. "Arrival." Letterboxd (September 6, 2018)

---. "Mad Max: Fury Road." Letterboxd (August 16, 2018)

---. "The Shape of Water." Letterboxdi i(August 29, 2018)

David Graeber: Anthropologist/Anarchist Dialogic Cinephilia (Ongoing Archive)

Demme, Jonathan, et al. "A Master Builder." Film Forum (July 23, 2014) [“The dynamic duo behind MY DINNER WITH ANDRÉ and VANYA on 42ND STREET take on another classic of the stage… With Jonathan Demme replacing the late Louis Malle at the helm, this terrifically performed version of The Master Builder… channels the rage, joy and delusions of an aging architect’s final days. A dense and occasionally poetic chamber piece… Shawn acutely conveys a character whose wickedness, which can be both flagrant and underhanded, is as towering as the weakness that consumes him during his last breaths, painting the portrait of a man who’s both remarkably self-consumed and constantly racked by fear and guilt. (Lisa Joyce’s) scenes opposite Shawn are among the film’s richest, filled with a mix of lust and loathing, while creating a sense of disembodiment that will haunt the final acts.” – Jordan Mintzer, The Hollywood Reporter]

Gillam, Carey. "How Monsanto Plants Stories, Suppresses Science & Silences Dissent to Sell a Cancer-Linked Chemical." Democracy Now (August 14, 2018) ["As Monsanto comes under scrutiny for allegedly hiding the dangers of its weed killer Roundup, we talk to a reporter who says the company attempted to censor and discredit her when she published stories on their product that contradicted their business interests. Carey Gillam is a veteran investigative journalist and author of “Whitewash: The Story of a Weed Killer, Cancer, and the Corruption of Science.”"]

Melancholia (Denmark/Sweden/France/Germany: Lars Von Triers, 2011) Dialogic Cinephilia (Ongoing Archive)





BORN TO FLY: Elizabeth Streb vs. Gravity [Official Trailer] from Aubin Pictures on Vimeo.






Melancholia (Denmark/Sweden/France/Germany: Lars Von Triers, 2011)






Melancholia (Denmark/Sweden/France/Germany: Lars Von Triers, 2011: 136 mins)

Behrend, Wendy Shanel. "The Birth of Tragedy in Lars von Trier's Melancholia."  (University Honors Theses. Paper 197: Portland State University, 2014)

Bond, Lewis. "Lars von Trier: Deconstructing Cinema." (Posted on Youtube: July 23, 2016)

Crooks, Hayley. "Come On, Get Happy…Justine." cléo 1.3 (November 28, 2013)

Grusin, Richard. "Post-Cinematic Atavism." Sequence 1.3 (2014)

Hollowell, Jenny. "The End of the End: An Evolution of Faith, in Five Films." Bright Wall/Dark Room #9 (March 29, 2016)

Leeds, David. "Melancholia." A Husk of Meaning (December 13, 2011)

Matts, Tim and Aidan Tynan. "The Melancholy of Extinction: Lars von Trier's Melancholia as an Environmental Film." MC 15.3 (2012)

O'Malley, Sheila. "Melancholia: Lars von Trier makes a despairing gesture, and this time he has a point." Politico (September 26, 2011)

Read, Rupert. "An Allegory of a ‘Therapeutic’ Reading of a Film: Of Melancholia." Sequence 1.2 (2014)

Renée, V. "Cinematic Depression: How Lars von Trier Distorts Time & Space in Melancholia."No Film School (April 9, 2016)

Power, Nina and Rob White. Lars von Trier's Melancholia: A Discussion." Film Quarterly (January 10, 2012)

Scott, A.O. "Bride's Mind is On Another Planet." The New York Times (November 10, 2011)

Shaviro, Steven. "Melancholia or, The Romantic Anti-Sublime." Sequence 1.1 (2012)

Sinnerbrink, Robert. "Politics, Theory and Film: Critical Encounters with Lars von Trier." Contemporary Political Theory 17.1 (February 2018)

White, Rob. "Interview with Manuel Alberto Claro." Film Quarterly 65.4 (Summer 2012)







Wednesday, September 5, 2018

Dialogic Cinephilia - September 5, 2018

"World Cinema’, to a French eye, is a very welcoming notion that could mean several different, even contradictory things. Among these, I will evoke three meanings:
1) Because of its predecessor World Music, which means the ethnic music re-arranged with electronic instruments to please Western consumers, World Cinema could function as a seductive formula for acculturation – after exploiting gold, diamond and every other kind of material resource, now the Western world is exploiting the immaterial patrimony of the rest of the world, including, of course, its own inner colonies.
2) In a much more objective, generous sense, World Cinema can mean ‘every kind of cinema that appears in the world’ – as Philippe Grandrieux might have put it, according to his historical TV experiment of 1987, The World is Everything That Happens (“le Monde est tout ce qui arrive”). The syntagm World Cinema helps to identify and evaluate non-dominant cinemas all over the planet. This is the opposite of the previous meaning: World Cinema as opposed to globalised cinema, with a hidden but obvious ‘s’ at the end of Cinema.
3) In a polemical and radical sense – conceptual rather than geographical – World Cinema means the cinema in relationship to the world, cinema in its ability to conceive and reshape the world, as opposed to the ‘fantasy cinema’ that forgets, often hides and sometimes betrays realities.
-- Nicole Berenz, "Political Cinema Today – The New Exigencies: For a Republic of Images." Screening the Past (September 2013)

Amy Goodman: Journalist/Executive Producer and Host of Democracy Now Dialogic Cinephilia (Ongoing Archive)

Bruce E. Levine: Clinical Psychologist/Critical Psychology Dialogic Cinephilia (Ongoing Archive)

Chelsea Manning: Soldier/Whistleblower/Prisoner/Politician Dialogic Cinephilia (Ongoing Archive)

Critical Theory and Concepts Dialogic Cinephilia (Ongoing Archive)

Hovey, Jed. "The Spectacle of the Scaffold – Foucault, Corporal Punishment, and the Digital Age." Blue Labyrinths (January 6, 2016)

Nelson, Josiah H. "Louis Althusser, the Ideological State Apparatus, and Interpellation." Blue Labyrinths (June 25, 2015)

Okeowo, Alexis. "A Devastating, Overdue National Memorial to Lynching Victims." The New Yorker (April 26, 2018)

Patel, Dhruvin. "Will Technology Ruin Your Child's Development?" Thrive Global (March 4, 2017)

Wolff, Richard D. "Ideological State Apparatuses, Consumerism, and U.S. Capitalism: Lessons for the Left." (University of Massachusetts Working Paper: July 2004)


















Chelsea Manning: Soldier/Whistleblower/Political Prisoner/Activist

(Chelsea Manning was formerly known as Bradley Manning.  Some of the resources where from that time)

Websites/Archives/Biographies:

The Guardian: Chelsea Manning

Democracy Now: Chelsea Manning

The New York Times: Chelsea Manning

Resources on Chelsea Manning and the case:

Allyn, Bobby. "Jailing And Fining Chelsea Manning Constitutes Torture, Top U.N. Official Says." Dialogic Cinephilia (December 31, 2019)

Assange, Julian. "Responds to Increasing US Government Attacks on WikiLeaks." Democracy Now (August 3, 2010)

---. "In U.N. Address, WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange Urges Obama Admin to End 'Regime of Secrecy'" Democracy Now (September 27, 2012)

---. "On WikiLeaks, War and Resisting Government Crackdown." Democracy Now (December 31, 2010)

---. "U.S. Probe of WikiLeaks & 'Show Trial' of Bradley Manning Aims to Scare Whistleblowers." Democracy Now (May 29, 2013)

Benkler, Yochai. "Fear of a Networked Fourth Estate." Media Berkman (April 29, 2011)

Broudy, Oliver. "Has Assange Turned Me Into An Anarchist? WikiLeaks wants to topple the Information State. Bring it on." Mother Jones (December 9, 2010)

Coates, Ta-Nehisi, et al. "On Terror and Bravery." The Guardian (September 2, 2018)

Cogan, James and Kevin Reed. "Chelsea Manning imprisoned without charge for six months for refusing to testify against Julian Assange." WSWS (September 21, 2019)

Crabapple, Molly. "Bradley Manning and us: a soldier for truth on trial." The Guardian (June 3, 2013)

Dewey-Hagborg, Heather and Douglas Rushkoff. "Stranger Visions." Team Human #8 (October 4, 2016) ["... the brilliant and terrifying artist and bio-hacker Heather Dewey- Hagborg. As a transdisciplinary artist, Heather explores the intersection of science, art and biopolitics. Heather recently made the headlines with a project called Stranger Visions, in which she collected random human genetic material left behind in the detritus of public spaces to generate portrait masks of strangers using a process called forensic DNA phenotyping. In another recent project, Radical Love: Chelsea Manning, Heather again used this process of DNA phenotyping to create a series of 3D portraits of whistleblower Chelsea Manning, who is not allowed to be photographed while in prison. Radical Love is both subversive and thought-provoking as it calls attention to Manning’s incarceration as well as issues of gender stereotypes and identity."]

Ellsberg, Daniel. "“I Know No One More Patriotic”: Daniel Ellsberg Praises Chelsea Manning After She Is Jailed Again." Democracy Now (March 11, 2019) ["U.S. Army whistleblower Chelsea Manning has been sent back to jail after refusing to answer questions before a grand jury investigating WikiLeaks and its founder, Julian Assange. Manning had been subpoenaed by federal prosecutors in Virginia’s Eastern District to appear for questioning about her 2010 leak to WikiLeaks of hundreds of thousands of State Department and Pentagon documents about the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Manning was imprisoned from 2010 to 2017 for the leak. President Obama commuted her sentence before he left office. We speak with Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg about the significance of Chelsea Manning’s actions."]

Goodman, Amy. "WikiLeaks’ New Release: The Kissinger Cables and Bradley Manning." TruthDig (April 10, 2013)

Goodman, Amy and Denis Moynihan. "Chelsea Manning: We Got This." Democracy Now (March 29, 2018)

---.  "Hammond, Manning, Assange and Obama’s Sledgehammer Against Dissent." Democracy Now (May 30, 2013)

Gosztola, Kevin and Chase Madar. "Bradley Manning Trial: After 3 Years, Army Whistleblower Begins Court-Martial Shrouded in Secrecy." Democracy Now (June 3, 2013)

Greenwald, Glenn. "Bradley Manning: The Face of Heroism." The Guardian (February 28, 2013)

---. "Chelsea Manning’s Refusal to Testify Against WikiLeaks Will Help Save Press Freedom." Democracy Now (March 11, 2019)

---. "Finally: hear Bradley Manning in his own voice." The Guardian (March 12, 2013)

---. "Obama’s Comments on Bradley Manning Mark 'Amazing Amount of Improper Influence' in WikiLeaks Case." Democracy Now (April 29, 2011)

"Guardian person of the year: Voters choose Bradley Manning." The Guardian (December 10, 2012)

Hedges, Chris. "The Collapse of Globalization." TruthDig (March 28, 2011)

---. "The Death of Truth." TruthDig (May 5, 2013)

Hrafnsson, Kristinn. "'The Kissinger Cables': Three Years After 'Collateral Murder' Video, WikiLeaks Explores U.S. Diplomacy." Democracy Now (April 8, 2013)

Johnson, Kirk. "Strong Women on the March at the Seattle Art Fair." The New York Times (August 12, 2018)

Karp, Paul. "Move to ban Chelsea Manning from Australia a 'political stunt' to appease Trump." The Guardian (August 30, 2018)

Kwai, Isabella. "Australia Plans to Deny Chelsea Manning an Entry Visa, Citing ‘Criminal Record.'" The New York Times (August 29, 2018)

Manning, Chelsea. "Chelsea Manning’s Platform for U.S. Senate: Abolish ICE, Dismantle Prisons, Healthcare for All." Democracy Now (March 28, 2018)

---. "On the far right, state surveillance and their lessons for Australia." The Guardian (August 8, 2018)

---. "On Trump’s Mission Accomplished Tweet: 'I Believe I Have Heard Those Words Before.'" Democracy Now (April 16, 2018)

---. "'We Cannot Wait for Change'—Freed Whistleblower Chelsea Manning on Iraq, Prison & Running for Senate." Democracy Now (March 27, 2018)

Mays, Jeffrey. "Adrián Lamo, Hacker Who Reported Chelsea Manning to the F.B.I., Dies at 37." The New York Times (March 17, 2018)

McDermott, Quentin. "WikiLeaks - The Forgotten Man." Four Corners (June 14, 2012)

McGovern, Ray. "In Support of Imprisoned Wikileaks Whistleblower Pvt. Bradley Manning." AlterNet (August 8, 2010)

"The Misplaced US Determination To Indict Assange." The Empty Wheel (December 12, 2012)

Pilkington, Ed. "'I'm a very different person than I was 10 years ago.'" The Guardian (January 19, 2018)

Ratner, Michael. "Exposed: U.S. May Have Designated Julian Assange and WikiLeaks an 'Enemy of the State'." Democracy Now (September 27, 2012)

---. "Speech on Bradley Manning in Washington DC." Law and Disorder Radio (The event was held at All Souls Church Unitarian in Washington DC, December 2012)

Robinson, Jennifer. "Julian Assange’s Attorney Decries Espionage Charges as 'Grave Threat to Press Freedom.'" Democracy Now (May 24, 2019) ["In an unprecedented move, the Justice Department has indicted WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange on 17 charges of violating the Espionage Act for his role in publishing U.S. classified military and diplomatic documents exposing U.S. war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan. The documents were leaked by U.S. Army whistleblower Chelsea Manning. The Espionage Act of 1917 has never been used to prosecute a journalist or media outlet. The new charges come just over a month after British police forcibly removed Assange from the Ecuadorean Embassy in London, where he took asylum in 2012. Initially the Trump administration indicted Assange on a single count of helping Manning hack a government computer, but Assange faces up to 170 additional years in prison under the new charges—10 years for each count of violating the Espionage Act. We speak with Jennifer Robinson, an attorney for Julian Assange. “It is a grave threat to press freedom and should be cause for concern for journalists and publishers everywhere,” Robinson says." Part two: "Daniel Ellsberg: Espionage Charges Against Assange Are Most Significant Attack on Press in Decades." Part three: "Jeremy Scahill: New Indictment of Assange Is Part of a Broader War on Journalism & Whistleblowers." Part four: "Assange Is Indicted for Exposing War Crimes While Trump Considers Pardons for War Criminals."]

Scahill, Jeremy. "The World Is a Battlefield: 'Dirty Wars' and Obama’s Expanding Drone Attacks." Democracy Now (April 24, 2013)

Shaer, Matthew. "The Long, Lonely Road of Chelsea Manning." The New York Times (June 12, 2017)

Wolf, Naomi. "How the US uses sexual humiliation as a political tool to control the masses." The Guardian (April 5, 2012)

Bruce E. Levine: Clinical Psychologist/Critical Psychology

Biographies/Archives/Organizations:


AlterNet: Bruce E. Levine

Bruce E. Levine's Personal Website

Mad in America: Bruce Levine

Mind Freedom (Scientific Advisory Board)


Resources by/about Bruce E. Levine:

Levine, Bruce E. "3 of the Biggest Misogynists to Reach the Oval Office Before Donald Trump Got There." Alternet (July 4, 2017)

---. "3 Things We Need to Do to Rise Up and Defeat the Corporatocracy." AlterNet (February 3, 2015)

---. "Americans' Political 'Psychotic Break.'" AlterNet (January 3, 2017)

---. "Anti-Authoritarian Options for Suicidal Anti-Authoritarians." Mad in America (April 19, 2017)

---. "Compelling Alternatives — ‘Outside Mental Health’ — To Mainstream Psychiatry." HuffPost (September 2, 2017)

---. "Crazy: Courageous Documentary About Forced Psychiatric Treatment." HuffPost (March 27, 2018)

---. "Does TV Help Make Americans Passive and Accepting of Authority?" AlterNet (October 26, 2012)

---. "Electroconvulsive Therapy and Women: Abuse or Treatment?" HuffPost (December 24, 2017)

---. "How Ayn Rand Seduced Generations of Young Men and Helped Make the U.S. Into a Selfish, Greedy Nation." AlterNet (December 15, 2011)

---. "How Psychologists Subvert Democratic Movements." Z (September 28, 2012)

---. "How Teenage Rebellion Has Become a Mental Illness." AlterNet (January 27, 2008)

---. "Liberation Psychology for the U.S." Everything Matters (November 23, 2009)

---. "Psychiatric Retraumatization: A Conversation About Trauma and Madness in Mental Health Services." Mad in America (July 26, 2018)

---. "Psychiatry’s Oppression of Young Anarchists — and the Underground Resistance." Mad in America (June 16, 2013)

---. "School Shootings: Who to Listen to Instead of Mainstream Shrinks." Mad in America (March 18, 2018)

---. "Toward a Healthy Society." Equal Time for Free Thought #388 (June 4, 2011)

---. "Why are Americans so easy to manipulate?" Salon (October 13, 2012)

---. "Why Do Some Americans Speak So Confidently When They Have No Clue What They're Talking About?" AlterNet (November 17, 2014)

---. "Why Life in America Can Literally Drive You Insane." Libcom (August 20, 2013)





















Tuesday, September 4, 2018

Dialogic Cinephilia - September 4, 2018

Angela Y. Davis: African-American Studies/Critical Theory/Feminism/Gender Studies/History/Marxism/Philosophy/Prison Abolition Dialogic Cinephilia (Ongoing Archive)

Banks, James A. "Knowledge Construction and the Education of Citizens in Diverse Societies." (A paper presented as the keynote address at the conference Interkulturell Pedagogik, September 23, 2009, held at the Göteborg Convention Centre, Gothenburg, Sweden.)

Bowker, Geoffrey C. and Susan Leigh Starr. "Introduction." Sorting Things Out: Classification and Its Consequences. MIT Press, 1999: 1-31.

Cultural Capital (Key Concept) Dialogic Cinephilia (Ongoing Archive)

Fausto-Sterling. Sexing the Body: Gender Politics and the Construction of Sexuality. Basic Books, 2000.

Ideology (Key Concept) Dialogic Cinephilia (Ongoing Archive)

Judith Butler: Philosopher/Gender Theorist Dialogic Cinephilia (Ongoing Archive)

Michel Foucault: Philosophy/History of Ideas/Social Theorist/Literary Critic Dialogic Cinephilia (Ongoing Archive)





Michelle Alexander: Civil Rights Lawyer/Legal Studies/Social Justice

"I am shocked that the NYTimes ran this powerful piece, but glad. This is a conversation we need to have. The author expresses what so many have been feeling - namely that peaceful protests have proven useless in recent years and so perhaps it makes sense to tell Baltimore officials to stop protecting the police or watch the city burn. I absolutely understand this sentiment and I've heard it expressed in various ways many times. There are a number of reasons why I disagree with violence as strategy, but in the short space here I'll just say one thing: As I see it, the reason nonviolent protests haven't yet achieved what many have hoped is NOT because the protests have been nonviolent, but rather because the problems and demands are often defined quite narrowly, and the tactics are typically reactive. There is a big difference between protesting when tragedies happen - marching in the streets with pastors asking for a few officers to be indicted - and building a nonviolent revolution against an unjust system. At its best, the Civil Rights Movement used nonviolence as a means of deliberately and strategically withdrawing all cooperation with a fundamentally unjust system. Think of the Montgomery Bus Boycott which nearly destroyed the bus system and rocked the city as a whole. Think of the Freedom Riders who refused to cooperate with or abide by segregation laws, throwing much of the South into an apoplectic state. And think of Dr. King, who at the end of his life said that the time had come to recognize the critical difference between a reform movement and a revolutionary movement, and urged advocates to work for a "radical restructuring of our society." At the time King was murdered, he was developing plans to bring a nonviolent army of poor people to Washington, DC and shut the nation's capitol down until Congress agreed to honor the basic human rights of all people to work for a living wage, live in decent housing, and obtain quality education. He wanted to paralyze the entire system of government and force a reckoning. In recent years much of that revolutionary spirit seems to have been lost or forgotten, particularly on MLK day when school children are taught the importance of nonviolence but not the importance of organized, nonviolent rebellion against injustice. Fortunately I see awakening today in so many young people - from Ferguson to Sanford to NYC to New Orleans to Chicago to Oakland to Baltimore and beyond - a fire and yearning for radical change that will not be satisfied by politics as usual or mere tinkering with the machine. We would not even be having this conversation today if it wasn't for the bold and courageous young people in Ferguson who inspired uprisings nationwide. Nonviolent protest forced a national conversation that politicians have tried to avoid for decades. We have more power than we realize, but we must use it strategically and proactively - not just sporadically and reactively. To this author I say: Don't burn Baltimore down. Shut it down. Let's use nonviolence as a strategic tool for revolutionary change, not as a polite response to predictable tragedy." -- Michelle Alexander on Facebook referring to the Baltimore Uprising and D. Watkins "In Baltimore, We Are All Freddie Gray": April 29, 2015)

Alexander, Michelle. "A System of Racial and Social Control." Frontline (April 29, 2014)

---. "Introduction."  The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. NY: The New Press, 2010: 1-19.

---. "The New Jim Crow." The UO Channel (November 15, 2012) ["For reasons that seem to have little to do with crime or crime rates, we in the United States have chosen to lock up more than two million of our citizens. The U.S. has the highest per capita incarceration rate in the world, and it is continuing to rise. Michelle Alexander, a legal scholar and former civil rights attorney, examines this phenomenon, and offers her thoughts on what she believes to be the underlying racial biases that drive the U.S. criminal justice system. Alexander’s lecture ... will be based on her recent book, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (2010)."]

---. "The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Color Blindness." We Are Many (September 12, 2012)

---. "Telling My Son About Ferguson." The New York Times (November 26, 2014)


---. "Why Hillary Clinton Doesn't Deserve the Black Vote." The Nation (February 10, 2016)

---. "Who We Want to Become: Beyond the New Jim Crow." On Being (April 21, 2016) ["The civil rights lawyer Michelle Alexander is one of the people who is waking us up to history we don't remember, and structures most of us can't fathom intending to create. She calls the punitive culture that has emerged the "new Jim Crow," and is making it visible in the name of a fierce hope and belief in our collective capacity to engender the transformation to which this moment is calling."]

The New Jim Crow (Website for the book)

Schuessler, Jennifer. "Drug Policy as Race Policy: Best Seller Galvanizes the Debate." The New York Times (March 6, 2012)

Wallis, Victor. "13th and the Culture of Surplus Punishment." Jump Cut #58 (Spring 2018)