Wednesday, November 21, 2018

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)


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