Sundance 2022: Brainwashed: Sex-Camera-Power: A Hard Look at How Our Brains are Shaped By Visuals

Happy 2022! Welcome to our first review of the New Year and our coverage of the 2022 Sundance Film Festival. This year boasted a plethora of amazing concepts and films and the first of our featured films begins here!

Thought you knew all the ways that toxic patriarchy seeps into your brain and creates the way you view and think about women? Think again.

Nina Menkes, writer, director, producer brings forth a powerhouse of information from years of film showing how “gendered” film really is and how white, cis men keep their power by creating it.

The Male Gaze

Menkes uses one of her film classes as the backdrop to the documentary. Through her extensive knowledge of film and using copious amounts of film clips throughout the years as examples, Menkes makes the claim that shot design is “gendered”.

She claims that shots surrounding males and females are consistently made differently. Using the concept of “the male gaze”, coined by Laura Mulvey in the 1970’s, and interviewing a diverse number of directors and scholars, Menkes makes a powerful and compelling case that the male gaze has infiltrated almost all aspects of film since its beginning.

She outlines how the patriarchy has created what it is to be a woman, in its image and how damaging this image has become to women, men and people of all genders. She discusses how women are shot in order to be objects instead of subjects, rather, how they are looked “at” by the audience and the men in films.

Tricks of the Trade

Through the use of framing, lighting, camera movement, narrative position Menkes shows us some of the biggest differences in how men are shot versus women. She states that men are usually shot in 3D lighting versus women who are shot in 2D, which makes the woman more of an image rather than a person.

She states that women are shot in fragments a lot, i.e., we see close ups of breasts, buttocks, genitals etc., which objectifies women by their body parts rather than seeing them as a whole person. Male filmmakers tend to use slow-motion body pans more on women, as a subject of sexuality but with men, slo-mo shots are reserved for action sequences.

Source: Glamour

Menkes claims that what is seen as beauty is entirely controlled by who controls the cameras, which, throughout most of history has been mostly white men.

The question is raised, how do women navigate being powerful, yet sexy enough to the male gaze? It is addressed that men use glamour to “seduce” women into powerlessness, yet the only way women can be powerful is by being “beautiful”.

Thinking back to all of my days watching films and I can confirm that just about every single leading lady in the history of mainstream film falls within the parameters of beauty of the white male gaze. Thin, white, hairless, a perfect hairstyle, makeup and the perfect wardrobe. Have you ever seen one film where a woman wakes up with no makeup on?

As it is in mainstream society, a woman’s power in any industry belongs to her attractiveness and by her using her sexuality. How many times have we heard of a woman “sleeping” her way to the top? Casting couches anyone? Or how about Harvey Weinstein, Bill Cosby, R. Kelly and Marilyn Manson’s use of toxic power to sleaze their wishes of power over promising young women in entertainment?

Keeping a woman passive is another technique used, whether a woman is passed out, asleep or even dead. Menkes shows multiple clips of films where men use a woman’s passivity in order to gain power over her or use the “no means yes” approach; when the man overpowers or forces a sexual encounter. Most of the time the woman featured is depicted as “happy” that the encounter happened.

What kind of message is this sending to young men? Where do men get the idea that a woman is something to be acquired rather than an equal? The saying that “those in power write history” is ringing all too true in film as well as regular society. Societal “norms” come from somewhere and it’s generally cis-male and white.

Maria Giese. Source: Sundance Film Festival

The Power Imbalance

94%, yes that’s right, 94% of women in film have experienced sexual harassment or assault.

Maria Geise, film director and longtime women in film advocate stated that, in general, laws are not created to deal with the film industry in order to foster fairness.

She stated that they attempted to sue the film industry for discrimination against women using Title VII, as Hollywood is one of its worst offenders, even over the coal mining industry. Though they made some headway using the power of the EEOC, things still haven’t changed. As of 2021 only 12% of directors of the top 100 films were women, down from 16% last year. Maria has been actively fighting this since the 1990’s.

As it stands today, only 5% of film composers are women; around 16% of cinematographers are women and most film distribution houses are run by men. With statistics like this there’s no way what we are seeing in mainstream film isn’t biased.

In 2010 Kathryn Bigelow became the FIRST female director in all of Oscar history to win a Best Director Oscar. Looking at the rest of the crew though, every other head of department was run by a male. People have criticized her stating that she could’ve hired more women, but, according to producer, writer, director Amy Ziering, a director’s hands are tied on who to hire as producers/heads of departments, as there simply aren’t many women to hire.

Anyone who dares to complain about it simply gets blacklisted and never works again.

The message sent is that white, cis males run everything and use that power to pull everyone else into their lies. According to the film, they believe themselves to be the “ultimate subject” and it is normalized and accepted as truth by mainstream society.

Joey Solloway. Source: Sundance Film Festival

In All Honesty…

Brainwashed is a triumph and an essential “must see” for film buffs and audiences alike.
Menkes brings an enormous amount of information to us using her expertise, that is imperative to know about. Even with my extensive knowledge on film, I have to admit, I wasn’t aware of specific lighting techniques and how certain shots create subjects vs. objects.

The use of power by men over women is nothing new, but when we can see so many of the insidious ways we are programmed by them, it is much harder not to see them again. We become something of a robot without it, programmed to go out into the world and emulate what power wants us to emulate. Cause, hey, if we are busy hating ourselves, we won’t be busy figuring out how to balance that power.

I’m appalled with what I hear coming out of an industry that has the ability and resources to create things of such beauty and magic. It’s the main reason I created this company because film artists should be able to enjoy fair employment without having to degrade themselves or sell their souls to do what they love.

I’m grateful to and celebrate people like Menkes and all of the people in this film, who use film to reach, teach and enlighten. It is one of the most important types of media existing and has the capability to change the world—if only the gatekeepers would get out of the way.

Art needs to be available and accessible to everyone not just those who can afford it or the reigning gender/race. It is crucial in our ever evolving and diverse world that we open ourselves to more voices with integrity and without stereotype. We won’t be able to move forward as a collective without seeing the “whole” of everyone’s experiences.

A power shift is more than necessary to do. Right. Now. Filmmakers, think before you make. Writers, write with great care and respect for the craft and the world. Producers and distributors, use more than profits to justify your choices. Hollywood and the mainstream film industry, open up, change and progress, else bear the burden of your eventual demise.

The fire of change is sweeping the earth, whether you like it or not. Stand in its way at your own peril.

Prayers For The Stolen: Growing Up in a Place of Violence

“I’m not in any hurry to bulk out my filmography, all that matters to me is to connect with projects which touch my heart and to give them my all so that I can bring them to fruition.”

YES! Heart, passion and quality is the calling card of true artists and how Writer/Director Tatiana Huezo brings her narrative film debut, Prayers for The Stolen (aka: Noche De Fuego) to vivid life. Set in the mountains of Mexico, Prayers For The Stolen is a beautifully filmed account of three young girls raised in a community of poppy farmers, besieged by warring drug cartels.

Some Never Return

The film follows the lives of three friends, Ana, Maria and Paula starting around age 8 and then later at 13.

Young Ana (Ana Cristina Ordonez Gonzales) lives with her mother Rita (Mayra Batalla) in a poor, rural mountainous region of Mexico. Abandoned by her father, Ana and Rita struggle to make a daily living on Rita’s meager poppy farming wage.

They, and most of the families in the community live in fear of the warring drug cartels that fight amongst themselves for control of the fields and who steal young girls for trafficking. Ana is taught early on what to do when they hear the roar of SUV’s coming up the mountain roads.

Rita has built a dugout “blind” of sorts in the backyard for Ana to hide out in whenever the cartel comes near their house. It is a fear that she and every girl in the community live with on a daily basis. Many mothers of girls here cut their daughters hair very short to attempt to pass them as boys.

Because once a girl is stolen, they never return.

Source: Netflix

Finding A Life

The people of the community etch out whatever kind of life they can muster in the small town. Kids do go to school, but teachers that come up to the regions are threatened by the cartels and, sometimes, are expected to pay the cartels money to be allowed to teach the local children. Each resident has a ramshackle home. There is a large community meeting place and a makeshift hair salon. They rely on each other for protection, news and support.

The three friends attempt to have a childhood, playing games, swimming, singing and hanging out together. Ana develops a budding romance with Maria’s older brother, Margarito (Julian Guzman Giron) from childhood into her adolescence.

In All Honesty…

Prayers For the Stolen is a beautifully filmed, heartfelt and heartbreaking feature that demonstrates the resilience of the human spirit.

The stand-out performance of the film by Ana Cristina Ordonez Gonzales as 8-year-old Ana is nothing short of extraordinary. In her first film, she delivers a portrayal of young Ana with an authenticity that rivals, if not outshines most professional adult performances. With her angel eyes that speak volumes with no words and her sincere, earnest emotional affect in every single scene, she captures your attention and your heart from her very first appearance.

Her interactions with Batalla were so genuine that it transported me back to my own childhood memories of how I felt with my own parents as a sensitive child. You could feel her hesitance, fear, love, sadness and a whole host of other emotions during her time on the screen.

Source: Netflix

Another stand out of the film is the luscious cinematography by Dariela Ludlow. Ludlow paints a canvas with a camera. From the lavish foliage that embellishes the mountainsides to the tiniest of insects in the neighborhood and forests, Ludlow creates a sumptuous feast for the eyes.

Though the film is mostly outstanding, I felt there was somewhat of a lack of story. We did get to see their everyday lives and how they managed to sustain in such a chaotic microcosm, but there was no satisfying wrap up and there was a lack of clarity on what specific message Huezo was sending.

Because of this I had a very difficult time coming up with things to write about it. Perhaps she meant to leave it open ended, but it felt fragmented to me and slightly unfinished. I wasn’t quite sure if Ana achieved her goal as the protagonist, nor what precisely that goal was. It left me with an obscure emptiness and a bit unfulfilled. It was difficult to pinpoint exactly what was missing.

Still, there is too much beauty and richness to ignore. Huezo has created an alternate view of life amidst drug cartels. Instead of focusing on all of the violence, she focuses on the workers attempting to scrape out as meaningful a life as they can with very little resources, then centralizes further on the dangers of growing up female in this microcosm. This particular slant is fresh and rarely seen.

It’s the perfect film to stream when you’re tired of watching all of the overblown garbage pumped out of the mainstream film machine and, if for no other reason, to see a riveting performance from an 8-year-old girl with such authenticity it will leave you utterly speechless.

Prayers For The Stolen is currently streaming on Netflix.

Blanco en Blanco: A Frightening History of Wanton Violence Wrapped in a Beautiful Package

TRIGGER WARNING: TALK OF RAPE

I’ve always said that the best films and scripts succeed through passion, heart and the ability to reach our emotions with as few words as possible. Screenplays are meant to be a visual art and, in recent times, the craft has been all but obliterated by overblown FX and mainstream film’s shameless self-aggrandizement.

Enter Blanco en Blanco from director/writer Theo Court. Set perfectly in the harsh terrain of Tierra Del Fuego, Argentina in the late 19th century, the film explores the consequences of ruthless, white, colonialist terrorism and the lie of white “purity” to cover it all up.

The Accomplice

Pedro (Alfredo Castro) is an aging photographer hired to capture the wedding of child bride Sara (Esther Vega) to the brutal and elusive colonizer, Mr. Porter. Pedro becomes an uninformed accomplice to Mr. Porter when he develops an inappropriate fascination with Sara while modeling her for pre-wedding photos intended for Mr. Porter.

After daring to take photos of her in her nightgown, shoulders and ankles revealed, Mr. Porter sends his regards in the form of his henchmen delivering a beating to Pedro. He is told that he is no longer allowed to take any more pictures of Sara but must now follow Mr. Porter’s journey of building up “his” land.

Source: Outsider Pictures

Mr. Porter demands a pictorial diary of his “heroic” decimation of the indigenous people there and his struggles to build a town in the unforgiving landscape they are all at the mercy of. From treacherous gales to blinding blizzards, the weather and desolate terrain become adversaries of their own and a major hurdle to Mr. Porter’s objectives.

Women’s Rights? What’s That?

The film delves deeply into the racial constructs and devastation of colonialism but also makes a frightening commentary on the treatment of women within the grasp of colonizers. Aurora (Lola Rubio), the white nursemaid to Sara, is depicted as a stern necessity to the household but is later seen claimed by one of the drunkard, white male workers, Propietario (Lars Rudolph). Her actual place in the house is most notably visualized during a drunken rape scene.

Even worse is the treatment of the indigenous women captured on Porter’s land. They are literally taken from their homes and given to the white working men as “gifts” from Mr. Porter for all of the men’s hard work and to boost their morale. The nameless women are humiliated, ripped from their homes and clothing and raped by random, drunken workers at the party. None of the men have any issue with it.

It is a silent but glaring depiction of what life was like for women, not only of this time, but also just a glimpse of the brutality that women, especially women of color, have faced over centuries. Women were and still are seen as sub-human, entertainment and commodities of war and life in general, for men.

Source: Outsider Pictures

In All Honesty…

Blanco en Blanco is, hands down, one of the most gorgeous and disturbing films of 2021.

Though set in a rugged, harsh terrain, the film itself is exceptionally beautiful. Painstaking attention to every tiny detail in directing, art direction and cinematography is evident in each exquisite frame. From the color palettes chosen, the costuming, the angles, lighting and the set design audiences could, theoretically, fall in love if it weren’t for the lurking, insidious horror beneath the surface.

As white-washed as history has been, Court drives home a parallel metaphor with his use of beauty and coloring in the film, that “covers up” all of the horrors within it. The artistry by the film’s crew is simply stunning. I usually watch films twice before writing a review but, even though I marveled at every masterful visual, I couldn’t help but feel completely sickened both by what we were able to see and what we didn’t.

There isn’t anything overtly graphic about the violence committed in the film, instead, Court, with great ingenuity, delivers a putrid feeling throughout that we cannot escape or ignore. Though I wanted to watch the film again, I couldn’t bear the thought. The message gets delicately, quietly, branded into your soul. It may not affect those with privilege in this world as much, but for women and people of color, it is a reminder of the history of violence we descend from and the tightrope we still walk in everyday life where “cis male and white is right”.

Source: Outsider Films

White girls of wealth, the younger the better, were sold off to older men of wealth as “brides” and women of color were raped, decimated and erased from history in astronomical numbers. There is no romanticizing the brutality of the past no matter how beautiful or “heroic” the pictures are portrayed. Just as the portraits were painted of the supposed “great leaders” of the past, photographs were and are also posed and as biased as the authors of mainstream written history.

Society’s obsession with the “purity” and control of women is still alive and well today. From female genital mutilation, fatphobia, abortion legislation, lack of quality mental and physical healthcare access all the way to the depiction of the “slut”, men still control the lives and bodies of women.

The white normative still permeates societies across the globe. It is a stain of oppression that simply will not go away but cannot be forgotten. Though it may seem that we are seeing progress, the reality is that it is still in control of everything we see and hear. Nothing gets past its ever-watchful eye, and it won’t go down without a fight.

We as a collective cannot move forward without first addressing and atoning for our horrific past. The importance of artistry is crucial to this fight with its ability to educate and spread awareness, but it too is mostly under the careful control of its patrons, and we all know who controls most of the wealth in this world.

Until the majority of us demand change, nothing will change. Let us celebrate artistry, such as this film, that brings us together, inspires us to start asking questions and lights the fire of change within us until real progress actually happens.

Together, anything is possible.

A La Calle: A Worldwide Call to Action and Help in Venezuela

“Si, se puede!” (Yes you can!) is the overwhelming battle cry of the people of Venezuela, fighting to be released from the dictatorial influence of current President, Nicolas Maduro. Under Maduro’s administration, Venezuela went from one of the richest countries in Latin America to one of the poorest.

Directors Maxx Caicedo and Nelson G. Narvarrete takes audiences to the streets of Venezuela in this timely and movement-inciting documentary.

From Inspiration to Autocracy

“In Venezuela, we don’t live, we survive.”

Venezuela’s soaring economy took a massive plummet after Nicolas Maduro took the reigns of the Presidency in 2013, following Hugo Chavez’s death. Chavez, who had been very popular for a time with the people, left a legacy of inspiration to those that followed him.

By 2017, the economy crashed, sending Venezuela into a humanitarian crisis of epic proportions. According to the film, Venezuela’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) went down to 67%. In contrast, the GDP during America’s Great Depression declined to 29.8%.

To say that the people of Venezuela are in utter devastation is an understatement. To this day people do not have the money to afford basic necessities like clean water, rice, or milk. They also do not have access to affordable, life saving, medicines, such as insulin. According to the film, the crisis they are faced with has never happened in any other Latin American country in history.

Leopoldo Lopez, once the mayor of Chacao, Caracas, stepped up to become the front line leader in the Maduro Administration’s opposition party. He supported the early protests, led by groups of students, to challenge and replace Maduro. In 2015 the people managed to vote a majority of the opposition party into the National Assembly. Maduro spent the next several years using his power to undermine the National Assembly, even stacking their Supreme Court, in order to rule with an iron fist.

Source: HBO Max

Maduro falsely accused Lopez of “inciting violence” when Lopez’s explicit platform was one of non-violence. Maduro eventually imprisoned Lopez, where he continued to advocate from inside his cell. Lopez’s wife Lilian supported her husband and his efforts in the outside world.

When Lopez was finally freed from his house arrest, he continued his fight against Maduro and helped support the new Oppositional Party President of the Assembly, Juan Guaido. In 2019, with the help of the people and defected military, Guaido declared victory as the “new president” but Maduro refused. This caused another large scale uprising that, unfortunately, did nothing to change the regimes.

In All Honesty…

Caicedo and Navarrete bring us up close and personal with the ongoing struggles, both politically and economically, of the Venezuelan people. A La Calle stands as a towering rallying cry for the oppressed across the globe.

A La Calle allows us to witness, first hand, the effect that brutal totalitarianism takes on a people and democracy. From the trash collector and his family in smaller neighborhoods, all the way to the politicians standing with the people against Maduro, no stone is left unturned.

Amidst the chaos and suffering, there is an inexorable flame of hope from those pushing fiercely forward to protect and defend the country that they love. We get to see how ordinary citizens and university students become extraordinary heroes and how their incessant dedication towards the cause is keeping the people continuing the fight.

Source: HBO Max

In a greater sense, the film also showcases the power of the human spirit in it’s unwavering desire for justice and a balancing of the scales. A spirit that lives within each of us, that keeps us moving forward through the harshest of times and shines like a beacon on the darkest of nights.

It demonstrates the power that humanity has when it works together toward a common cause and against the much too common enemy of greed and destruction.

Despite countrywide protests; elections; uprisings and pleas for help from the International community, Maduro remains in power. The humanitarian crisis has caused millions to flee to Colombia and elsewhere for asylum.

International aid has failed to come into the country due to the Maduro regime closing the borders and enforcing them with military violence.

We have seen a rise in fascist politicism all across the world over the past several years. Wherever there is ignorance; suffering; massive income discrepancies; misinformation; oppression; silencing and an overall lack of basic human rights, despotism waits in the wings to take advantage.

The eyes of the world cannot turn its back from what is happening in Venezuela. We must remain vigilant and stand united to stamp out tyranny in all its forms.

For more information about the crisis in Venezuela, or how you can support the cause visit the film’s website at alacallefilm.com or visit the World Vision organizations website at Venezuela crisis: Facts, FAQs, and how to help | World Vision

A La Calle is currently streaming on HBO Max

The Song of The Butterflies: A Gorgeous Look Into an All But Forgotten Indigenous People

The Song of the Butterflies, written and directed by Nuria Frigola Torrent, follows indigenous painter Rember Yahuarcani on his quest to find inspiration for his next great piece. He longs to continue telling the stories, through his exquisite paintings, that his grandmother passed on to him, about the legacy and lore of the Uitoto people in Amazonian Peru.

A Storyteller

Rember lives in Lima, Peru, in what appears to be one of the city’s center plazas. There he tells the stories relayed to him about his ancestors and culture by his grandmother through his art. Rember is part of the White Heron clan which currently has only two families remaining.

Through his incredible paintings, he keeps the voice of his grandmother alive, as she would’ve wanted, in breathtaking color and imagery. Though Rember has painted many pictures, he has gotten to a point where, like most artists, inspiration isn’t coming.

He reaches out to his family, who still lives in the jungle and begins his quest for his elusive muse.

Another Society Decimated by Colonialism

“We are the traces of the great fire of war”

Rember returns to his family home, his father, mother and younger siblings. Rember’s mother is a sculptor and traditional mask maker and Rember’s father is a painter and a teacher to his siblings. In a painting, Rember’s father relays one of the horrifying stories about their ancestors who were enslaved, brutalized and thrown on fires.

Source: PBS

Before greed infested their jungle paradise, the Uitoto people lived in remote peace in an area protected by nature from the rest of the world. Then, word got out about the native rubber trees there and white colonizers were eager to gain control.

During the Rubber Boom, both in the early and middle 20th Century, the Uitoto population went from around 50,000 down to 7-10,000. Disease, murder and displacement of the Uitoto flourished as greed and power-lust ravaged their lands.

Rember reaches out to members of other clans in the region and the stories of massacre abound. One of the stories of the Bofaina clan speaks of their people being forced by a foreman to get up for work before dawn. Treated terribly by the white colonizers, they asked “Why do you treat us this way? We are human too.”

The clan eventually rose up and killed the foreman only to be burned alive in their sleep by other foremen. Fueled by the very rubber they were forced to collect, the fire spread quickly and burned the entire clan within the house.

Source: PBS

Another story involves a place called “Casa Arana” that still haunts the indigenous population today. In it’s prime it was a rubber warehouse right on the river, where indigenous people were forced to come on a daily basis to weigh the amounts of rubber they collected. If they did not fulfill the weight goals set upon them, they could be lashed or even beheaded.

The elder states that this is the place of the largest indigenous genocide of the area. Some claim to still hear the screams of the fallen Uitoto there. Started by Julio Cesar Arana, one of the main figures of the rubber industry, his business, which was reliant on indigenous labor, was responsible for the decline of half of the indigenous population there and in surrounding areas.

Rember finishes his trip meeting with some tribal female elders and talks with them about their contributions to both the clans and the legacy of the Uitoto people.

In All Honesty…

Song of The Butterflies is a quietly sublime film that tells the stories of a people all but exterminated. It gives us a look into the soul and spirit of a culture and community that lived in peace and harmony with their natural surroundings.

Through the stories and art handed down generation by generation, we get a glimpse of the lives of the Uitoto people and the abundant lands they once lived in. The most magnificent part of the the film was the story of how they believe their ancestors of the past, live on in spirit, through all of the stunning butterflies and moths that fill the region. It brings a sense of hope and beautiful spirituality to a history marred by suffering and colonialism.

Cinematographer Nicolas Landa helps create Rember’s and the Uitoto’s story through impeccably elegant imagery, capturing the beauty of the land, its animals and its people with masterful skill. His imagery paints the backdrop for the film story that is a feast for the eyes and senses.

Art by Rember Yahuarcari. Source: PBS

The importance of this film and it’s subject cannot be understated. We live in a world that is still ravaged by big business and greed. As a collective, we must come to terms with and redress our history of brutality and imperialism in the name of rapacity and white supremacy.

The Uitoto’s land is still under threat today. If we do nothing to preserve what is left of the Amazon, the rain forest, its precious inhabitants and indigenous population will be eradicated forever. We cannot afford to stand idly by and let another indigenous people be erased from history.

But as we’ve seen countless times in all of human history, human lives and nature mean nothing when there is money to be made. I can only hope that, soon, we understand the importance of preservation and respect for life.

Nature will balance itself eventually. What remains to be seen is if humanity as a collective will be there after it does.

The Song of the Butterflies is available to stream for free at POV.org until October 29, 2021

Rare Beasts: A Look at the Not So Rare Broken Collective

Rare Beasts is the directorial and writing debut of Billie Piper, who also stars in this peculiar and sometimes nauseating look into broken people attempting to find love and acceptance, at the cost of their dignity. It seems to be a commentary, in fact, regarding how alike so many of us are in our insecurities under the weight of toxic society and a look at the journey to find clarity in the recognition of just how broken we are.

Hi! I Don’t Love Myself!

Mandy (Piper) is an eccentric, single mother navigating life in the midst of deep depression and is a slave to the toxic masculine that permeates her world. Her ailing mother Marion (Kerry Fox) and extensively quirky son Larch (Toby Woolf), live with her, adding a greater level of stress and tension to her already screwed up existence.

Pressure is mounting for her to find a man and get married as she is an “older” single woman, i.e. “less than” in toxic masculine parameters. She meets Pete (Leo Bill), the living embodiment of toxic male insecurity and anger and all but forces herself to fall in love with him because he “tolerates” her.

Mandy is a prime asset to the toxic masculine because she has been trained extensively by her broken parents to embrace and become the toxic feminine. She works with the worst of troglodytes at her job and is immersed in drug-addicted, toxic friends.

Desperation Makes A Terrible Partner

Source: Brainstorm Media

As the film continues, Mandy becomes more desperate to hang on to Pete. She settles for his abusive moodiness to both herself and her son. Paralleled throughout, is the toxic relationship that her parents had while she was growing up. Dad Vic (David Thewlis). is a philanderer and a drunk and mom Marion, a jaded depressive living with her daughter because Vic left her no place to go after their divorce.

We begin to see why Mandy is the train wreck that she is. Aspects of mental health abound throughout but is never talked about by the characters. Instead, rampant drinking, drugging and smoking keeps all of the characters repressing their pain and acting out in a myriad of unhealthy ways.

Even when Mandy has her realization at the end that she is broken, there is little solace that she is headed in the right direction after. She has no person of clarity in her life who can elucidate the way out of the brokenness she now owns.

In All Honesty…

There are a lot of aspects of the film that I liked and that seemed promising, but the confusion in how the film was put together made it difficult to love. I was never quite sure where the film was going or what message Piper was trying to convey.

The editing was rather clunky and added to the confusion overall. Mix that in with ridiculously loud and seemingly unnecessary musical montages throughout and lucidity in purpose stayed muddled. Maybe this was intended for artistic reasons but it was not effective in conveying any sense of hope or transparency, which was sorely needed.

Source: Brainstorm Media

Still, I did like the underlying themes of how women and men are raised in and then consumed by, toxic masculinity. It perpetuates a never-ending cycle of the broken raising the broken. Women become the unwitting victims of toxic masculine privilege and rage, while perpetuating and succumbing to it in countless ways.

Capitalist society encourages self esteem issues, bombarding you with messages and products that tell you that you are not enough as you are. Why wouldn’t they? They stand to make billions on it. Toxic society tells you that you’re too ugly, fat, stupid and flawed, but only those with money can afford the “treatments” to fix all of that.

The problem is, none of the products fix anything, instead they keep us focused on the soulless, shallow pursuit of “perfection” that is sexist, racist, ableist, fatphobic, LGBTQ-phobic and impossible.

Piper magnified this in the film when, no matter what Mandy did or endured, at least she looked good. Several men symbolically pat her on the head with a condescending “but you’re so pretty” or “hot” as if it was a shame she was messed up, because her “prettiness” was being wasted.

Society tells us that “pretty” is the most important thing for women to be, regardless of if it’s pursuit devastates our lives. It is pervasive in all of our media and men are allowed to look and act out all kinds of “ugly” and still get jobs, relationships, power and respect. In that sense, Mandy is a poster child for how sick our society is.

The truth of it is, perfection can never be attained as humans and while we are broken we will never have the healthy relationships we crave. We first must heal from our own trauma and learn to love ourselves before we can ever really love anyone else.

However, one needs to wake up and attain clarity before they can shift tracks and that is incredibly difficult with all of the garbage dumped on us from day one. The broken don’t usually have the mental, emotional or physical resources needed for clarity and toxic society thrives on that.

One of my biggest takeaway’s from the film is that Mandy, Pete and their families represent an unfortunate majority rather than a rarity. I think many viewers can find things to relate to in these damaged characters, and hopefully, it will resonate enough to shift perspectives for the better.

Because we all have it within us to uncover our unique lights that were meant to shine in this world, but we must have the courage to walk through the dark in order to find them.

The Body Fights Back: Exposing Western Society's Toxic Obsession with Weight

Rory Brown. Source: Gravitas Ventures

***TRIGGER WARNING: TALK OF DISORDERED EATING AND TRAUMA

Western society has a major illness. Driven by misinformation, propped up with biased medical studies and funded by powerful companies set to make the most money off of the results, the diet industry proliferates.

The diet and food industry is steeped in a history of fatphobia; racism; ableism; a capitalist society that makes billions on making sure that you don’t feel good and a medical community willing to go along with the misinformation for profit. It ultimately bolsters and maintains a toxic, oligarchical system based on prejudice and lies.

The Body Fights Back , written and directed by Marian Vosumets, pushes back at the toxic system to reveal the truth that most are unwilling to accept.

The Sacrifice of Real People in Exchange for Money

“Let’s just take care of ourselves turned to something horribly destructive”-Imogen Fox.

The Body Fights Back chronicles the daily lives of several, brave individuals of various ethnicities and sizes and how their lives have been impacted by toxic diet culture and fatphobia. The film focuses on life in the U.K. , though the stories could resonate anywhere in westernized culture where thin and white falsely equates to health and beauty.

Rory is a bodybuilder at his supposed “peak”. His body is the supposed “fit ideal”, but what he has to go through in order to keep it is impossible to sustain in the long term. Not only did he spend most of his time in the gym, he ended up developing an unhealthy obsession with working out and binge eating. His entire life revolved around how he looked and no one knew about the 10-15K calorie per binge, eating disorder he struggled with.

Imogen Fox. Source: Gravitas Ventures

Imogen, who struggled with being overweight due to a disability in her younger years, is now thin but still not healthy. Imogen talks about how awful her life was being overweight and how stigma and fatphobia affected her. Doctors would blame her weight for her health conditions, yet, she still has health issues even though currently thin. Imogen now fights back by speaking out about this biased discrepancy and is now a warrior for body positivity and equality.

Mojo is another body positive warrior deemed “overweight” by society. Mojo struggled growing up with a fatphobic, abusive mother who would tell her things like she had a pretty face, but her body didn’t match. Mojo reveals that she was molested by a family member as a child and her mother blamed her for it. She also was raped at age 13 and was told that was her fault as well.

Mojo has struggled with her weight and weight stigma her entire life, but is now beginning her journey toward self love and acceptance. She is an outspoken advocate for body positivity and is reframing her relationship with food. But the judgements by others steeped in fatphobia still plague her life.

The Diet and Stigma Effect

As the documentary proceeds, we meet a few others who are struggling and we begin to see an insidious pattern emerge. Whatever began the process for each person and whatever behavior they cope with, the main components feeding into all of the eating disorders is stigma, fear and fat hatred.

Western society embraces the toxic masculine and everyone suffers under it. The thin, white, female beauty normative that is worshipped by too many cultures is not only fatphobic but racist, elitist, ableist and driven by money. After all, if we feel there is something wrong with us, capitalism will create a product to “fulfill” the need, even though it never really works. It keeps us buying more.

Mojo. Source: Gravitas Ventures

Diets are a perfect example of that. Diets and all of the products created for them is a multi-billion dollar a year juggernaut, incessantly fueling body shame and stigma no matter what guise of “health” it hides itself under. There is study after study the shows that diets are proven ineffective, at around 98%, but people keep flocking to them and failing, inadvertently, getting fatter because of it.

When the body goes into starvation mode it slows the metabolism and then ends up holds everything it gets. As such, once someone eats normally again, they gain weight. It’s a natural protection mechanism to balance the loss in the body. Why would any competent medical professional recommend something to so many patients with as big of a failure rate as that?

BMI as well has been proven an ineffective tool to use on individuals. It was created to be used on larger populations, and, as we see in the film it is used to further bully and stigmatize people based solely on their weight. Then the medical and insurance community use that to usher in, what I like to call, lazy diagnostics.

Thin people can also get Type 2 Diabetes, have heart attacks, high cholesterol and high blood pressure, among other things blamed on “obesity”. All this type of “science” does is legitimize bullying and cruelty. Then, as they say in the film, it makes weight your “identity”.

And Even More…

The film goes on to discuss how dieting is steeped in patriarchy. It shames women for not “snapping back” after child birth and praises those who work tirelessly to have the body they had before pregnancy. It allows social bullying under the guise of “concern about health”.

As the film states; if government was so concerned about people’s health, why isn’t everything we eat natural and organic? Why does it cost so much to buy real, whole, food rather than the alleged “unhealthy” choices? Even the UK recently proposed a sugar and salt tax blaming “obesity” as a costly side effect financially burdening their National Health System.

Source: The Evening Standard

Do they really think it will work? How many times has a government mandated restriction ever stopped people from wanting and accessing what is outlawed or penalized? Look up Prohibition in the United States as an example.

The only people who will suffer under this particular tax, is the poor. The limited food supply they had financial access to, will be taxed at a higher rate and pesticide-ridden, inorganic, fruit and vegetables will be “prescribed” for them.

Why don’t more people realize that the system is purposely set up like this so that the rich thrive and the poor fail? Medical officials don’t want people healthy, they want us sick so they can get their kickbacks from the pharmaceutical industry when they recommend drugs that we have to keep taking to “stay healthy”.

In All Honesty…

Government and this toxic society wouldn’t know health if it ran over them with a truck. The lust for money and power keeps us all sick in a myriad of ways.

As the film states, we need a fair society that is compassion centered. Where individuals are valued and where mental health is a top priority instead of stigmatized. Though we are seeing a slow movement towards body positivity, big money is fighting it all the way.

The film introduces intuitive eating and the Health At Every Size (HAES) movement. It also features a look at the annual festival put on in London by the “Anti Diet Riot Club”, where all bodies are celebrated and loved for exactly what they are.

Every body is unique, legitimate and worthy of respect. Period.

The Body Fights Back is an effective, all encompassing overview of the adverse, repugnant repercussions caused by the toxic, fat phobic diet and food industry. It is a rallying cry for people to see the real truth and not what is falsely “fed” to us on our television and phone screens.

It is also a call for self love, kindness and highlights the importance of mental health before true physical health can ever happen. Westernized society is sick and there isn’t anything but greed behind it. The body will always fight back in order to obtain its predetermined-by-nature equilibrium.

It’s time we fight for and demand that our society embrace the same.

Legend of The Underground: The Struggle for Nigerians to Be Who and What They Are

“Nobody is free, until everybody is free!”

A truer phrase was never uttered. Legend of the Underground, a new documentary produced and directed by Giselle Bailey and Nneka Onuorah, explores the hidden, “non-conformist” culture alive and not so well in Nigeria. Non-conformists face ridicule, death threats, jail time, physical abuse and being ostracized by their families.

Michael

Michael, who currently lives in NYC, is an self proclaimed advocate for gay men. He speaks of an experience when he traveled to Washington DC a few years ago, to speak at conference about what he does and the services he renders.

Shortly after the conference, The Washington Post released a picture of him at the conference, embracing another man. He thought, at first, that everything would be ok because only American’s would see it. He was wrong.

When he returned to Nigeria, police busted into his apartment, threw out his clothes, burned other items and attacked him, hammering his head with a stick and beating him, while calling him homophobic slurs. Michael then fled for his life back to the United States claiming asylum.

“Non-Conformists” in Nigeria live in fear for their lives every day. Constantly being harassed by police and being accused of homosexuality based solely on how they choose to act, dress or for being “effeminate”. If found guilty in their courts, they face up to fourteen years in prison.

Source: HBO Documentaries

Obialor James “Brown”

James is an actor, singer, dancer/entertainer in Nigeria. Self expression is paramount not only to his life but his to his thriving Instagram account. James is an outspoken advocate for non-conformists in Nigeria. He lives with several other non-conformists in a safe house called “The Royal House of Allure”.

James has been arrested on multiple occasions for the posts he puts up on Instagram of him dancing and acting. In the documentary, we see him returning in and out of court on ambiguous allegations of homosexuality.

James’s popularity has only increased since he started his Instagram page. He coined the hashtag #theydidnotcaughtme in reference to his arrests and the fact that no police caught him engaging in sexual activities with a man.

Nigeria prohibits same sex “amorous relationships”, but the burden of proof is still on the prosecution. Many of these cases get thrown out due to lack of witnesses and verifiable proof. Police arrests, much of the time, are out of assumptions and hearsay.

James’s notoriety also brings a flurry of unwanted attention. He gets barraged with daily death and acid attack threats and people telling him he will “burn in hell” in his Instagram feed.

James’s newsfeeds and popularity catches the attention of Michael in New York, which inspires him to return to Nigeria to meet and collaborate with James.

Source: HBO Documentaries

In All Honesty…

Bailey and Onuorah have managed to pull together a solid, informative documentary.

Non-conformist struggles are worldwide. Fear and ignorance under the guise of “morality” or misinterpretations of religious texts are used everywhere to wreak havoc, war and pain on all kinds of innocent people. This is nothing new. Humanity’s seeming need to “other” people has caused reckless and irreversible damage since the beginning of our time.

The film does an excellent job laying out the specifics of the problem surrounding non-conformers in Nigeria but leaves us feeling lacking in what we can do about it. It also struggles with building a sense of inspiration and inciting a rallying cry amongst supporters.

We meet several fascinating people but really only get to hear about two of their stories in any depth. The most inspiring part peaks at a NYC Pride event in the beginning. From there, the pace gets a bit sluggish and the stories, choppy.

The lack of momentum and spirited emotion left me wanting. These are people who are, potentially, sacrificing everything to fight against wanton hate for the freedom to be who they are. They are beaten, jailed, ostracized and tortured in Nigeria, and, tortured in holding cells in the US when they seek asylum.

Given the consequences surrounding their choice to speak out, I felt they deserved something with more urgency and passion. Still, bringing these stories to an international audience couldn’t have been easy. Legend of the Underground stands strong as a crucial part of the international conversation we need to be having concerning human rights.

It chronicles the struggles of these freedom fighters while showing us the similarities we have with them, as human beings. Our need to feel love and be loved. Our need for expression and acceptance. Our need to open ourselves to differences and life-long learning.

Humans are complex creatures and none of us is like any other. However, what we miss a lot of the time, is that anything that a human can be is, in fact, human. Not everything we do as a species is benevolent or wholly loving. So why should we make it a priority to chastise others for who they love, or from benignly expressing their soul’s creativity and light?

Who is anyone to say what is right for anyone else? We don’t have to agree with or do anything that other people do, but everyone has the right to be what they are as long as it doesn’t harm themselves or anyone else. Why not focus our energies on improving ourselves and becoming the best, most loving being we can possibly be? The world is not bereft of war, violence, hatred, ignorance, or greed, but it is missing out on a whole lot of love and acceptance.

We can start by learning to love ourselves. Sometimes that first step toward loving change is hard, but it is so worth it in the end. Love’s beauty is as endless as all of the extraordinary beauty there is to find in the myriad of beings on this planet. Every time we choose love, we make a step forward in a global energy shift towards peace and good will.

I applaud these “non-conformers” for having the courage to speak out and inspire positive change in their parts of the world. I stand united with them in their struggle to shift the collective consciousness from ignorance and hatred to one of tolerance and love.

For in the end, what else is there, but love?

Wrath of Man: The Expensive Price Tag of Ego

Guy Ritchie and Jason Statham team up again, this time, with a mind-blowingly, non-sensical and ultra contrived collection of random set pieces. Hang on to your hats friends, not because the film is mind blowing, but because it’ll blow your mind as to how this film got the greenlight in the first place.

How and for what?

I normally appreciate Ritchie’s films. While never lacking in toxic masculinity and bigotry, in the past, he has pulled some pretty incredible, large cast, scripts together through ingenuity and hard work.

With yet another star-studded cast, I can’t for the life of me figure out what attracted A-listers to this script. Maybe they signed on just for Ritchie’s reputation, without seeing a script at first.

H (Statham) is a seemingly average guy (yeah right) who applies to work for a large armored truck company. But as expected in any Statham film, he secretly has a past and present that have trained him with “special skills” that make him inherently invincible and make the bad guys bow to his presence. Through several flash forwards and backs, we come to understand that H picked this place for a reason.

Earlier in the timeline, H’s son Dougie (Eli Brown) gets ambushed by a gang of narcissistic sociopaths, who bushwhack an armored car loaded with cash. Both H and Dougie just happen to stop right in front of the group posed as construction workers and H leaves his car and Dougie to walk around the corner to a food truck.

Why H didn’t pull up right where the food truck was versus walking a block away, only makes sense if lazy scriptwriting needs a convenient place to isolate the son. Here, again, for some reason, one of the criminals shoots and kills Dougie, leaving it open for H to seek revenge.

Source: MGM

In All Honesty…

Wrath of Man is a harsh reminder to me why I usually, exclusively review independent films.

I’m purposely leaving this review short because I refuse to waste my time delving into a film that had minimal to no heart put into it.

Wrath of Man was painful to watch. It is another example of a filmmaker with privilege using his status to push through a shoddily thrown together script and spending reckless amounts of money on something with no heart or point.

I’ve never seen a studio level film with a script that was so bad that even A-list, legendary actors couldn’t do anything with it. The, usually, exceptional ensemble that Ritchie gathered was completely lost and wasted on this.

With the exception of Statham, who plays the same character in every movie he does, I could actually see the actors acting while they helplessly floundered through the excruciatingly awkward dialogue.

It felt like I was watching a rehearsal of the first draft of the script, with explosions added. Roughly edited with a sub-par grasp on story, character and plot, and wholly implausible American accents from the UK actors, Wrath of Man plods awkwardly along with no rhyme or reason. It still has Ritchie’s signature toxic masculinity and bigotry but with none of the purposeful dialogue or ingenuity.

But this is far from the first time that studios have allowed a privileged, white male get away with wasting millions of dollars on an ego trip, though.

This is an ongoing problem that Hollywood continues to flaunt in our faces and, by the looks of the audience score on Rotten Tomatoes, people are lapping up the excrement with glee. It proves that the Hollywood elite can continue to defecate onscreen and audiences will continue to pay to see it.

As long as that continues to happen, we will see no change in the industry as a whole. It’s truly heart breaking to witness when there are so many talented people out there with far better ideas and scripts that will, most likely, never be made.

We, however, will continue to be a voice against this blatant corruption, greed, elitism and waste with everything we’ve got. Until film and filmmaking has integrity, heart and true diversity, we won’t stop.

Handmaid's Tale Season 4: A Stunning, Spectacular, Emotional Journey

Hulu’s spectacular series, The Handmaid’s Tale, returns for Season 4. If you thought the past three seasons were good, be prepared to be breathless with, hands down, the best, most impressive season of the series.

Bringing the Best and Pulling ALL of the Punches

At the end of season 3, June (Elisabeth Moss) had managed to rescue around 80 children from the clutches of Gilead and flew them all to Canada to be reunited with their real families. She, painfully, stayed behind to help more children and handmaids and, of course, find her own kidnapped daughter, Hannah (Jordana Blake).

Season 4 keeps the momentum going, blazing with the fire of war both literally and figuratively. Unlike many of the past seasons that ceremoniously focused on character back stories, Season 4 wastes very little time in it’s forward and, sometimes, backward motion. Every single episode has a soul-shattering revelation and/or a shocking development that is unmissable.

We welcome back the regular characters of past seasons and meet a few new ones. From the steadfast Moira (Samira Wiley), the scheming Waterfords, Fred and Serena, (Joseph Fiennes and Yvonne Strahovsky); the stealthy Nick (Max Minghella) to the brilliant Ann Dowd, as the earnestly vengeful Aunt Lydia.

There isn’t a cast member that doesn’t give their absolute best to each of the characters. There is no slack anywhere, at any moment. Through all of the powerful and heart wrenching circumstances, the actors fully embody their characters and the performances are outstanding.

Moss gives her best performance to date in the series, which speaks volumes, as her past performances of June were nothing short of riveting.

This season, June is expected to endure more than any human can take and Moss never relents. Sometimes searing, other times agonizing, her performance should be at the top of every list during awards season. Moss also takes a hand at directing three of this season’s episodes.

Source: Hulu

In All Honesty…

There aren’t enough words to express the brilliance of Season Four’s daunting, impassioned, rollercoaster.

I expected that Season Four would be good but I never expected the level of dedication, effort, struggle and mastery that the artists of this season give both on and behind the screen. Everything about this Season is spectacular and cannot be missed.

When I say that every single episode holds a secret or happening that will shock, move, disturb, make you laugh or make you cry, I mean it. I literally felt exhausted for the actors at times. Handmaid’s Tale, Season Four, gets into your skin, grips you and makes you participate.

We feel the emotions of the actors; we awe at the spectacular filming; we are astonished by the meticulous writing; and anguish and marvel with every twist and turn. There isn’t a moment of any episode that drags or is unnecessary.

Be prepared to burn in the blistering fire of June’s wrath as nothing will stand in her way to serve justice and bring Gilead to its knees.

Season Four begins Wednesday, April 28, 2021 exclusively on Hulu.

The Power: What Goes Around Will Come Around

“You will listen to us”

What is it about the dark that is so scary? The unknown? Our own imaginations? Or is it something that lurks deep within our psyches; something we simply don’t want to deal with?

Writer/director Corinna Faith brings us a tale, not only of things that go bump in the night, but brings to light, within the dark, a subject far too ignored in our world: The chronic silencing of women.

Things Are Not Always What They Seem

The film takes place in early 1974 England, when there was a crisis between the government and coal workers, which lead to early blackouts each evening to conserve electricity.

Val (Rose Williams) is a new nurse starting at a decrepit, urban hospital. Meek and submissive, she is intimidated by almost every person she comes into contact with, except the charming Dr. Franklin (Charlie Carrick), who seems to take to Val right away. Val wishes to work with children and Dr. Franklin attempts to help her do so, despite the overbearing hospital matron (Diveen Henry), who won’t seem to give Val a break.

While wandering the halls, Val meets up with Saba (Shakira Rahman), a young, non-English speaking patient of Dr. Franklin and takes to her. As Val’s problems grow with her co-workers and an ominous presence in the hospital begins to make itself known, Saba and Val forge an unlikely bond, not realizing just how much they have in common.

A Whisper To A Scream

Source: Shudder

Shortly after Val begins working the night shift the lights get powered down in the hospital.

She’s forced to orient herself to a multiple level, labyrinth of a hospital while being harassed by the men who work there, scorned by her female colleagues and being plagued by things that go “bump” in the night.

As the evening drags on, she finds herself engaged with an angry spirit, intent on gaining her attention, for what reason, she does not know. The more she tries to run away, the more the spirit torments her, possessing her body if need be, to get it’s mission completed.

As Val meets character after character in the hospital, the mystery gradually becomes clearer, as she realizes there is more to fear from the people working there, than the eerie presence haunting her every move.

Source: Shudder

In All Honesty…

If a picture speaks a thousand words, then this film speaks innumerable.

Faith brings us a film that appears, on the surface, as one we’ve seen before. But as the film progresses we see, that what we thought we knew, isn’t actually what is going on.

With skillful and genuinely frightening scares, Faith creates a wake up call for all who are watching. The message? Women are not meant to be fodder for toxic masculinity. Yet from how women are treated on a daily basis and have been for millennia, one would never know it.

Faith brings this subject to the screen in a very inventive and ingenious way using character and metaphor to bring it to life. She writes very skillfully and purposefully, with nothing extraneous or unnecessary and holds off satisying her audience until the very end.

Though the idea of the angry ghost is very common, Faith backs it up with creativity and allegory so painstakingly planned out, it keeps you guessing till the very end. Once you think you’ve “seen it before”, another twist comes in to prove you wrong.

The beauty of this film lies in its pictures and subtleties. Each character represents an archetype of personality and the hospital itself is a character; a massive, looming representation that enshrouds the other characters in it’s powerful, malevolent force. Hopefully, one that is breaking down, just as the hospital in the film is.

It’s climax is not to be missed or misunderstood. Without spoilers, I found it to be an incandescent breath of fresh air. It tingles the spine while blowing you away with metaphorical and corporeal wrath so wonderful, it leaves you speechless and overcome with toasty goosebumps-if you understand it and are open to it.

As a connoisseur of the Horror genre, I found that The Power stands tall amongst it’s predecessors and is definitely a force to be reckoned with.

Sundance and SXSW 2021: Violation: When Chemistry Turns Into A Nightmare

*Trigger Warning: Reference to Sexual Assault

Welcome to our coverage of SXSW 2021!

This year’s pick for our favorite in the Feature category is Violation from writer/director Dusty Mancinelli and writer/director/star Madeleine Sims-Fewer. I missed it’s debut at Sundance 2021, but was curious to catch it when I saw it also at SXSW 2021. Violation covers a topic so individual and devastating that if it wasn’t acted and filmed so masterfully, it would’ve been a terribly hard pill to swallow.

With stunning, sensual cinematography and two leads with off-the-charts chemistry, Violation delves deep into the darkness where sexuality crosses into violence and the capability of violence to send the human psyche into splintered hell.

The Energy Beneath the Flesh

Miriam (Sims-Fewer) and her partner, Caleb (Obi Abili) join Miriam’s sister Greta (Anna Maguire) and her husband Dylan, (Jesse LaVercombe) on a getaway trip to a remote cabin. Miriam is on the verge of a break up with Caleb as things haven’t worked out with him the way she wanted.

Sparks fly when Miriam sets out on a walk with Dylan. From the laughs to the subtle touches and body bumps, it is clear that there is something between them simmering beneath the surface. During a night by a campfire, when both of their partners go inside before them, Miriam and Dylan commence down a dangerous road, where attraction and chemistry turn into assumption and tragedy.

But when it comes to the subject of intimacy; assumption, driven by ego, privilege, alcohol and desire, become the poisonous accelerant capable of sparking off the flames of wrath.

Source: Shudder

Did I Imagine It?

The aftermath of sexual assault is terrifying and paradigm shifting to say the least. When clarity is clouded by substances, circumstance and attraction, it muddies the water even more. Questions abound in the victim’s mind and they also succumb to rampant, societal toxic masculinity causing shame and drawing ire from those who once supported them.

The process is so earth-shattering and painful it can drive someone to desperate acts, especially when, like most, the victim is not heard or helped. Miriam attempts to get solace from Greta regarding the nebulous event, desperately trying to show her who Dylan “really is”, but Greta isn’t capable of hearing it.

With an absence of support, Miriam’s own lack of clarity and her ever growing rage and shame, she ends up taking things in her own hands. But the vengeance she plans for turns awry over and over, putting her in a flaming tailspin that will claim her very soul.

In All Honesty…

No. Two letters. Seemingly so simple, but tends to fall upon deaf ears quite frequently. Especially in power struggles. No does NOT need to be stated to still be a no.

As the Tea Consent video states, “if someone is unconscious, don’t make them drink the tea”. “How silly”, one might think, “if someone is unconscious, they can’t drink tea”. Right. Now apply that to sex. Still seems pretty straightforward to me, yet way too many use “body part availability” and the impression of desire to turn a “no” into a perceived “yes”.

No, or any version of it, is Still. Fucking. No. Burn it on your brains.

Sims-Fewer and Mancinelli have created a visually gorgeous depiction of desire, darkness and despair with the phenomenal eye of cinematographer Adam Crosby. Crosby catapults us within the world of the characters and their emotions with plenty of “up close and personal” . Whether the shots are so detailed and graphic that it makes us flinch or so hazy that we aren’t quite sure where we are or what is happening, the audience is forced to engage.

Sometimes beautifully sensual and other times brutally visceral, like it or not, Violation leaves a strong impact on you. The brilliant way the film is edited and put together, there are plenty of surprises and shocking curveballs you never see coming.

Sims-Fewer and LaVercombe sizzle with a chemistry that can only set off a massive powder keg when things go wrong and hazy lines get crossed. Both of their intensities have a level of authenticity that can be utterly unsettling at times, but it creates a film with undeniable legitimacy and abrasive validity.

Brutal and heart-wrenching is the only way to describe Violation, for no detail, no matter how coarse, is held back. It is definitely not a film for the faint of heart, but its core is so full of veracity that anything less wouldn’t serve it. After all, sexuality, sexual assault and fury isn’t pretty or easy. We shouldn’t expect it to be here.

Source: Shudder

Violation is as beautiful as it is triggering. The beginning gives no indication of how merciless and inflammatory it is going to become, yet, when is violence ever charming and delightful? It is the cry of war built up within a person done wrong and the rallying cry of survivors of toxic masculinity everywhere. The pain is soul-destroying and the filmmakers have done it agonizing justice.

In this case, the film’s vulgarity and heavy-handedness works. It shows how something that started out so seemingly innocent can unknowingly change the course of someone’s life forever.

I can’t help but think, though, how easily these kinds of situations could be avoided if we just listened and actually heard each other, but the allure of power and entitlement is shamefully celebrated in our world. The Toxic Masculine burdensomely hangs over women’s shoulders everywhere, along with its consequences and the blame for it.

Can we blame victims for wanting to hurt the people who forced them to endure a murder of the soul? What if people just didn’t rape? What if the punishment for assault was as painful as surviving it?

What if no meant no and it was actually respected by every other human on the planet?

Sundance 2021: Mass: The Forgiveness and Film We All Need

2020 was a thoroughly exhausting year for most of us. We found ourselves fumbling to live amidst a raging pandemic and, many of us, through the politicians who didn’t do anything to protect us. Not only that, but in the US, the political climate was so divided with reckless disinformation and hate, that it left the country with a wound that has done nothing but fester and incite violence the likes the country hasn’t seen since the Civil War.

The January attack of the American capitol in Washington D.C. gave politicians their first taste of what it felt like when armed gunmen freely entered an arena they were never supposed to. Feelings, I’m sure, that resonated with those who have been victims in school and other mass shootings.

Enter on the stage Mass. Written and directed by Fran Kranz, Mass explores what happens when the parents of a mass shooter and the parents of one of his victims come together for a talk.

Awkwardness, Pain and Shame

The film opens in a rural church. Judy, the church coordinator, played by Breeda Wool, who starred in a very enjoyable short I covered in last years Bentonville Film Festival, is fussing over particulars regarding a gathering that we have no details on.

Jay (Jason Isaacs) and Gail (Martha Plimpton) hesitantly pull up. Reluctant to even get out of the car, they sit in awkwardness awaiting something we have yet to know. The tension escalates when they encounter Richard (Reed Birney) and Linda (Ann Dowd) in the meeting room.

Source: Sundance Film Festival

Brilliantly portrayed awkwardness ensues as the couples flounder through niceties and small talk, covering up the searing pain like a paltry potpourri sprinkled on a rotting corpse. The quiet moments betwixt are deafening and the discomposure sets in an incredible sense of irritation that makes the watcher want to crawl out of their skin, in order to call out the elephant in the room.

As the conversations continue and we are fed information piece by piece, we become aware of just how deeply serious and horrific the underlying story is. It may make some want to bail. Yet we are set up so gently; so purposefully, we find ourselves too invested to walk away.

“He Was Quiet and He Was Doing Well”

It is revealed that Richard and Linda’s son, Hayden, killed Jay and Gail’s son, Evan, in a mass school shooting. Emotions race with the ups and downs of a never-ending rollercoaster. Who do we blame, what is responsible? The conversations veer through a gamut of topics ranging from the failures of the mental health system, video games, isolation, parenting, the school, biology and bullying.

Humans, in general. try to find something or someone to blame when something tragic happens. It’s in our nature to want to know why. However, the details usually elude us and we are left only with assumption and ignorance. We rarely ever get to hear both sides of a story and sometimes an action is too terrifying to want to.

Kranz does an impeccable job with this quagmire, touching upon every question, disagreement and complication one could think of, with intelligence and meticulous craft. Every argument one side comes up with is countered with an equally compelling argument from the other side. His brilliant script gives the actors every precious word that they need to immerse themselves in the characters and render authentic, performance perfection.

Each of the four leads are powerhouse actors in their own right but I was astounded by their ability to hit every nuance of the character’s grief. Nothing is held back. They navigate the roller coaster ride with a capability that has eluded them all until this film and that is, obviously, saying a LOT.

Source: Sundance Film Festival

I am a huge fan of Isaacs and have been ever since I saw him in The Patriot. I grew up watching Plimpton in so many 80’s films and Dowd is my personal success story heroine. Birney is so versatile that I didn’t even recognize that he was in another Sundance film on my roster, The Strawberry Mansion. Each of them bring all of their years of experience and lovingly pour it into each character manifesting their best works to date.

Using all of the these elements, Kranz embroiders an exceptional and painstakingly intricate symposium on the effects of gun violence, grief, authenticity, blame and suffering, mixed with the beauty of whole hearted and sometimes agonizing forgiveness.

In All Honesty…

I never saw this one coming. Mass was my absolute favorite feature of the films I saw at Sundance 2021. I was speechless at the lack of accolades it received in Sundance’s awards.

I spoke with one of the producers who was at the festival and he told me that they managed to film this in a matter of two incredible weeks. Truly astounding. It shows you the level of talent, dedication and preparation involved in both the cast and crew.

Mass reminded me of one of the gorgeous, sleeper indies that manifested itself into the Oscar’s, in the days when films weren’t just one recycling after another. A time when originality and craft were chosen over flash and noise. A time when character mattered and the heroes looked like you and me. A time when what a film had to say was more important than how rich it could make someone.

Mass takes an incredibly controversial and violent subject and breaks it down to essential humanity proving the overwhelming power of forgiveness. It gives us hope that even through the most unspeakable horror, that we can still heal and that it is possible to see those that we want to demonize with compassion.

Source: Sundance Film Festival

In the Q&A, Dowd broke down a bit when discussing her character and relayed how she “held the grief” of a parent that lost a child throughout her time filming. As Linda, she gave the most realistic depiction of that loss that I’ve seen in a very long time.

Isaacs talked about how he found himself filled with hatred, at times, for all of the disgusting things that were happening in the world, from our toxic politics to the people suffering under it. He stated that this film helped him to see the humanity in others and the importance of forgiveness.

And we need forgiveness and compassion more than anything right now. The United States has had 31 mass shootings in January of this year alone. The worldly pandemic has kept us all more isolated than ever. Real human interaction and connection eludes us, as we all rely on electronics to work and communicate safely.

We need more compassionate films as well. Kranz’s feature debut is outstanding. Full of heart, honesty and naked vulnerability, you could tell that he was just as invested in this project as the awe-inspiring actors. The question is, upon the well deserved success of this film, will Kranz be able to continue to put out that level of passion and heart in the rest of his works? I hope he does because I’m rooting for him. At this profit obsessed junction in film history, I’d be thrilled if even half the films that were distributed had the same level of care and attention to detail that Mass has.

Art is meant to inspire; make us think; bring us together; show us different perspectives and teach us things we couldn’t learn any other way. As artists I believe we have a responsibility to use our platforms for as much good as we can, especially when we get the privilege of a green light on our work. Art doesn’t have to be as “deep” as Mass, but there are all kinds of ways we can inspire and put our best forward in all of the choices we make.

Bravo Fran. You’ve set your bar high and proven that you can meet it. I look forward to seeing what you choose to do with your spotlight.

Landfall: An Atypical Documentary on the Aftermath of Hurricane Maria

Filmmaker Cecilia Aldarando creates a film using a collection of vignettes of everyday life in Puerto Rico, post Hurricane Maria. Unlike most documentaries, Aldarando trades discourse for visuals. Though it paints a picture of several towns across the country and their post-Maria state, I’m just not convinced that “mostly visuals” communicates the story the filmmaker intended.

“They’ll Never See Us As Equals”

Despite being US citizens since 1917, Puerto Ricans still do not enjoy the same rights as US citizens.

Hurricane Maria, considered the worst natural disaster to hit Puerto Rico, St. Croix and Dominica in the past century, roared into Puerto Rico in September 2017. Puerto Rico was already $74 million in debt before this Category 5 storm hit.

The Obama administration attempted to address the debt installing a taskforce known as “La Junta” in 2016. The taskforce looked for ways to cut hundreds of millions of Puerto Rico’s debt, yet the budgeting ended up hitting Maria’s victims the hardest. They were left with no roads, bridges or helicopters to reach isolated people.

As has been widely broadcast in the past, the Trump administration did practically nothing for the widespread devastation and Trump himself was quoted to say that Hurricane Katrina was a “real disaster” in comparison. He was seen throwing rolls of paper towels, in Trumpian “let them eat cake” style, to desperate residents who had no electricity or clean water.

Trump was also reported to have stated that he wanted to exchange Greenland for Puerto Rico because Puerto Rico “was dirty and the people were poor”. And of course we can’t forget Trump’s numerous tweets scapegoating both Puerto Rico and the Democrats for Maria’s devastation and for making him look bad. Roughly 3000 people died due to the lack of the federal and local government’s response, yet he did nothing but deny it.

Source : Mandel Ngan-Getty Images

It wasn’t until January 2020, after terrible earthquakes and aftershocks created more devastation, that Trump declared Puerto Rico a disaster and approved the release of funds to aid them.

Couple that with widespread corruption throughout the Puerto Rican government and you’ve got the making of a revolution.

Aftermath

The film strays from the usual informational approach, supposedly to create a more intimate portrait of the people across the country. We see several different kinds of people from old to young, rural to urban, living in the altered landscape.

Elisa, one of the featured citizens, managed to rally her community to take over a local abandoned school for those in her town who were stranded and left homeless. The group cleaned up the school and used the kitchen and it’s classrooms as a “community living experiment” to house and feed those affected.

As can be expected, not all of the recovery efforts were benign. The film shifts our focus to the greed vultures that descended upon the ruins to take advantage of the devastated. Cryptocurrency millionaires, taking full advantage of the lack of taxes on new businesses there, swooped in to attempt to build brand new neighborhoods and make the locals believe they were there to help them.

Source: Blackscrackle Films

The Puerto Rican government was all too keen to cash in and allow these predators in. Widespread riots by the people ensued and after only 12 days, they managed to oust then Governor, Ricardo Rossello.

The fight didn’t end there though. The current governor Wanda Vazquez, who publicly endorsed Trump’s re-election, is also being set to task over corruption and withholding needed supplies, left to rot in a warehouse, meant for victims of the numerous natural disasters there.

In All Honesty…

I have very mixed feelings about this film.

Aldarando set out to create “poetic sensibility to documentary film”. Using moving images of a handful of different lives, Landmark “examines a ruined world at the brink of transformation, spinning a cautionary tale for our times.”

Aldarando definitely created a unique documentary, one vastly far from my expectations. This is unlike any documentary I’ve seen, but that isn’t always a good thing. A lot of what was filmed seemed irrelevant, making the pacing slow and leaving me confused about the actual point she was trying to get across.

I was hoping to be informed more. I was excited to learn, from the eyes of the people who live there, how the US’s lack of action and the corruption of their own government affected the people. Instead, I was left to make a lot of my own assumptions based on a lot of inconsistent, baffling imagery.

Source: Blackscrackle Films

If it weren’t for the press notes that I had available to me, I would not have understood much of what Aldarando was going for. There were a lot of extraneous, unnecessary scenes that didn’t seem to fit. Perhaps there was meaning for her, but it didn’t quite translate on screen, which makes me wonder if it will translate to her audiences.

Don’t get me wrong, this isn’t a bad film and definitely has a place in history as one to watch and learn from. I guess I was just hoping for more straightforward knowledge from the people’s themselves. I wanted to hear about their struggles in a clearly defined, personal, well-planned tale.

I do believe Aldarando accomplished what she set out to create. Just know that, as a viewer, you will not get from Landfall what you get from most documentaries. It’s not traditionally set up but it definitely communicates. It’s energy radiates the tensions extending from the hearts of a thoroughly mistreated people who defy the victim label handed to them by colonialism, racism and greed.

Overall though, it’s a portrait of resilience, pride and survival. It is a rallying cry against corruption and greed. It is a testament of the human spirit that, eventually, will overcome the darkness that holds us down on a daily basis. One of the quotes featured in the film says it all:

“It was (became) the hurricane we had trapped in our chests”.

#Unfit: A Summary of Four Years of News with a Warning

“Donald Trump is like a practical joke that got out of hand”-George Conway

Let’s face it, the past four years have been some of the most tumultuous years America has seen. I don’t think there has been a president in history that has been so protested. It seems that everything the Trump Administration does is to destroy any and all progress we have attained with other administrations.

#Unfit serves as an all encompassing run down of Trump’s most shameful antics, that are only news to those who haven’t been watching all along.

The Psychology

Using experts in psychology and those who have worked with/known Trump, the film presents a strong case for what is known as “Malignant Narcissism”. According to the DSM-5, the default book that diagnoses mental disorders, Malignant Narcissism needs four components for this diagnosis. 1: Paranoia, 2: Sadism, 3: Anti-Personality Disorder and 4: Narcissism.

Using Trump’s own Tweets; clips from his interviews and press conferences; and his own actions/policies, they propose that Trump is, in fact, a Malignant Narcissist.

Critics of the psychologists who have come forward in the past, claiming that Trump is psychologically unfit to serve, state that these mental health professionals have no way of “diagnosing” Trump when he isn’t their client.

However, Trump’s consistent, tireless assaults on our people and our democracy seem to speak for themselves.

The Tarasoff Rule

Source: Bronson Park Films

The film takes us back in time for a bit to 1964 when Barry Goldwater was running for President. It talks about a stunt by psychologists to ruin Goldwater’s chances of winning by falsely accusing him of being psychologically unfit. Goldwater sued for libel and won, as they had no evidence to back up their claims.

Most of the time a psychologist/client relationship is protected under privacy laws. However, the Tarasoff Rule of 1974, “imposes a duty on a therapist to warn appropriate persons when a patient may present a risk of harm to a specific person or persons”. For example, if a client tells a therapist that they are going to kill themselves or another person, it becomes law for the therapist to report it to authorities.

The psychologists in the film contend that this rule applies to Trump and his actions and why they felt compelled to come forward because of it. They state that the evidence far exceeds claims from the Goldwater case, as Trump’s actions alone prove their claims.

Do we know if this is all true for sure? Of course not, and my guess is that we never will.

In All Honesty…

But that doesn’t mean it isn’t true either.

Trump, on so many occasions, has spent his time in our White House doing some of the most self serving and despicable acts any acting President ever has. He has proven himself to be unstable, unreliable, intolerant, revenge-driven, childish and downright disgusting.

He clearly has no boundaries and has no respect for the law or of anyone else but himself. He lacks a basic empathy that mimics demagogues of the past and of today. He has also sided with current demagogues, emulating their behavior and desiring their power. Anyone can see that.

Source: Bronson Park Films

But Trump supporters, according to the film, are supporting him because they are “angry”. Angry about being “left out”. They may have a right to be angry about certain things and may have some valid points regarding some of their anger. But if it’s just about “I’m not being celebrated anymore because I’m white”, that holds very little regard in our changing global society.

As human beings and as beings with souls we have the duty to learn and grow our entire lifetime. We have the duty to adjust with change and continue to educate ourselves on anything deemed “different” in the world because anything that a human can be is still human-good or bad. The bottom line is, one race does not inherently deserve all the glory, nor does one gender.

We have a duty to reject stereotypes and the toxic beliefs people we grew up with may have erroneously laid on us. We have the duty to help and serve each other, because NONE of us can do this alone. It’s okay to be angry about the way things are changing, but it is never ok to chastise or harm others because of it.

Trump reflects our dark sides like a glaring mirror and most of us don’t like to look at it. However, it is 100% up to us to deal with it. Do we continue to turn a blind eye believing “that doesn’t affect me”? Do we continue to let party politics divide us further and lead our country down a path that we won’t be able to fix for decades to come? A path that will have dire consequences on our lives and the lives of others?

Do we continue to buy into the vitriol and spite and allow the dark to consume us as a whole? No. The entire world survives on balance and we are not separate from that. Though we are FAR from balanced as a species, that doesn’t mean that life isn’t trying to get us there at all times.

Which is why we fight. It’s why we care. It’s why we help others. It’s why we share. Deep down we all know the answer, it’s just a matter of navigating our journeys to come back to our truths. That takes an inordinate amount of work that, again, we cannot do on our own. Being decent, kind and honest isn’t dumb, it’s right.

Source: Bronson Park Films

#Unfit is an important documentary for those who haven’t been watching the news these past four years. It makes some fascinating points. But at the end of the day, does it matter what Trump is diagnosed with?

It is to the point where our very existence is being threatened by extremists and their minions are willing to lay down like cowards to allow it to happen. Greed, power-the earthly kind, and chaos reigns in our world. We allow 1% of the population to covet and exploit the riches of our planet and dehumanize the masses, all for “things” that mean nothing in the end.

We cannot and must not, as a whole, allow someone like this a second chance. He has shown us over and over again who he is and what little regard he has for anyone else, but that still isn’t swaying those who wish to stay lost and buried under the muck.

#Unfit represents a wake up call to those of us who know better, to do better. We have the power, as a collective, to demand the “elites” out of everything. Rules can always be changed. Things that we value can also be changed. The question remains, though, will we ever actually DO something about it?

We MUST listen when anyone shows us who they are, because they are unlikely to change. Especially when they’ve been living that way for 74 years. Those who don’t are doomed to suffer the same consequences over and over again, ad nauseum.

We all need to open our hearts and be more compassionate. We need to listen more and talk less. We need to empathize with the suffering and find ways to ease pain. We need to reject the material gods that the 1% peddles as “happiness” and focus on healing and loving. All that has existed in the name of greed must be dismantled and driven out, starting with the “leaders” who value it.

We can do better, we just need the self esteem and clarity to recognize that we deserve it. Let’s do this together.

Bentonville Film Festival 2020: Coming Clean-The Greed and Racism Driving the Opioid Epidemic

Coming Clean is an eye-opening, disturbing documentary written and directed by Ondi Timoner. Through the history of other drug epidemics and the personal stories of those affected today, it explores the devastating opioid crisis in America and it’s calamitous impact on it’s people and economy.

History of Opium

The film indicates that there were four historical Opioid epidemics in history. The first started in the 1830’s China, pushed by British trade in China. A search of the internet brings up many articles regarding the East India Company and its pursuit of control in India.

The East India Company (EIC), built as part of colonization efforts by the British Empire, controlled most of India by the 1750’s. The war in India and British demand for Chinese tea, paid in silver, had put England into considerable debt. To supplement their income, they used the large Bengali source of opium to trade with China in lieu of paying taxes.

Though Chinese law prohibited opium trade, the EIC found ways to overwhelm the southern Chinese coast with opium, supplying and addicting millions. With the increased demand, it all but wiped out China’s silver supply.

The second came in the 1870’s with the dawn of morphine. According to History.com, German scientist Freidrich Surturner “first isolated morphine from opium in 1803”. The film states that when morphine was derived, it was considered better for you than opium because it was a purer product. However, it was 10x stronger than opium and was widely used in America for pain relief during the Civil War.

Then, in looking for a less addictive form of morphine, heroine was created in the 1870’s. Because it was synthetic it was thought to be non-addictive, yet the third epidemic started in the 1900’s.

By the 1980’s, a surge of the use of Oxycontin began, fueled by lies and greed from its creator, Perdue Pharmaceuticals. According to this article from The Atlantic, one letter published in 1980 in the New England Journal of Medicine fueled the current opioid epidemic.

Source: The Atlantic

This letter, also cited in the film, states that the writers found “there were only four cases of reasonably well documented addiction in patients who had no history of addiction.” And further, that “We conclude that despite widespread use of narcotic drugs in hospitals, the development of addiction is rare in medical patients with no history of addiction.”

Perdue Pharma ran with this, citing the letter in it’s claims that opioids were not found to be addictive. They told the public Oxycontin use was “safe”, disregarding the study’s actual findings.

How The Opioid Crisis was considered a Crisis

Illegal opiates ran rampant in poor neighborhoods of color in many forms, from heroin to crack cocaine. Though these crises existed well before the US called it a crisis, it wasn’t until prescribed painkillers, which led to heroin use, infiltrated upper class, white suburbia, that it was found to be a “problem”.

When it started killing an inordinate amount of white teenagers in affluent neighborhoods, then the government started looking into the problem. The film attributes higher use of pain pills in teens to a generation living with higher levels of anxiety and depression.

Though social media can bridge a lot of gaps, studies are finding that the lack of physical interaction as a major source of depression. Humans in general are “pack animals” and we need one another to survive. Social media is pervaded by images of the rich and beautiful, who’s lifestyles are actually rare and impossible for most to attain. This too contributes to depression.

Couple that lack with childhood trauma and you’ve got a perfect mixture for addiction. According to the film, if you have only one of six types of childhood trauma, i.e. abandonment, you are 3100% more likely to be an addict over your lifetime.

Now, add in a completely profit driven, broken mental health system and what results do you think will happen? There is a massive lack of mental health services and a bigger lack of sympathy for addicts. Many believe it is a choice, a belief that couldn’t be more wrong.

The Biology of Opioid Addiction

Source: Interloper Films

According to the film, opioid addiction starts in the body. Opioids disconnect the pre-frontal cortex, the part of the brain used in judgement and analysis, favoring the midbrain, where our basic impulses, like hunger, sex and thirst are controlled.

Like food and sex, opioids send in a rush of endorphins which, naturally in the body, are our “pleasure” hormones. Hormones produced in the brain, like dopamine and serotonin, are crucial for a sense of well being in the body.

Opioids, however, are synthetic, sending an unnatural rush into the body. With continued use, your body quits making natural endorphins because it no longer thinks it needs to. When this happens, your body becomes “addicted” to the opiate because it is now the primary source for these hormones. As such, withdraw can be excruciating and many addicts continue use not for the “high”, but to avoid feeling sick.

According to the film, in Colorado alone, there are currently more deaths per year from opioids than from guns, homicides and auto accidents combined. In 1999, America’s “drug of choice” was alcohol. By 2019, it was all about prescription drugs.

In All Honesty…

Source: Shutterstock

There is FAR more information to be learned in this film. What I’ve written are just some of the important highlights within it. It is crucial to see this film and inform yourself about the horrific greed/racism behind the profits made from people’s pain.

According to the film, Switzerland hasn’t had a heroin related death in fifteen years since they made it legal, in a controlled setting. They’ve been able to use an all encompassing process that includes mental health and housing in order to gradually reduce the amount of pain these people feel in general. Why can’t/won’t the US do this? The almighty dollar.

In fact, in 2018, a subsidiary of Perdue Pharma was able to get the patent on a new drug that could help with opioid addiction. Yep, the same company that got millions sick is now set to profit from it’s “cure”. How disgusting is that? America has a “for profit” healthcare industry that makes more money on people staying sick than getting better.

Now that COVID has hit everywhere, mental health in general has declined, because we are having to isolate even more than ever. This, in turn, is driving higher addiction rates. There is simply not enough help to serve the need.

Common street nicknames for Fentanyl in the US

The newest drug Fentanyl, is 100’s of times stronger than morphine, yet it is being laced in most street drugs. Fentanyl is also much cheaper overall to make and pharmaceutical companies/dealers stand to make huge profits from it.

Where, I ask you, will this end? When will life be more precious to humanity than the almighty dollar? The answer alludes me, but I can’t help but think how much better humanity in general would be without money ruling it. The reality though is that nothing is ever going to change without overwhelming demand for it.

The ruling class is poisoning humanity and the planet with greed. As long as they can keep us fighting one another, the focus will stay off of them and will keep us busy with things that don’t really matter. It will keep most of us sick, uninformed and poor. This is the only way they can keep things going the way they are.

In the meantime the lack of awareness and sympathy for others pain will keep driving addiction. When humans can’t get what they naturally need, i.e. support, community, living essentials and love they will always find substitutes to get it.

Healing from pain is a long, tough road. We need more love, compassion and togetherness to overcome the paralyzing power and corruption of money. Like opiates, it too is a poisonous addiction that won’t bring true happiness or fulfillment.

It’s clear from history that greed is responsible for mass destruction of all kinds. Ultimately the choice is ours as a collective. What remains to be seen is if a better way of life for everyone is important enough to step out of our comfort zones and actively push as long as it takes for change to happen.

I’m in. How about you?

Bentonville Film Festival 2020: Welcome Diversity and our First Featured Short!

Welcome to our coverage of the Bentonville Film Festival!

Created six years ago by Geena Davis, Bentonville Film Festival focuses on “promoting underrepresented voices of diverse storytellers”, and aims to “amplify female, LGBTQ+, people of color, and people with disabilities in entertainment and media.”

When I received an invitation to cover this, I had no hesitation to jump on board because, um, WHAT A MATCH! Over this week we will be featuring shorts, features and documentaries within the copious amount of wonderful work accepted to the festival. Without further ado, let’s begin!

Long Time Listener, First Time Caller

Source: Glass Cat Productions

Our first film is from director/writer Nora Kirkpatrick. Already a veteran in TV and Film, she tells a tale of the meaning of life in only 17 minutes.

Nan (Breeda Wool) is a housewife living in the middle of nowhere. She spends her days cleaning up the house pretending that it serves her. Her husband Mick (Dominic Bogart) works outside the home and always comes home to a meal, ignoring Nan for his nightly quiz show.

Nan has an old radio that she listens to that, one night, tunes into a talk show hosted by “Mister Mars” (Demorge Brawn). Nan likes listening to him answer callers deep questions about life, wants to call in herself, but is too shy at first. When she finally gets the nerve to call, she hangs up.

She tries again and this time is successful. She tells him that she got married, but asks ‘how do you know if it’s real?’ After a battery of questions from Mister Mars, Nan’s paradigm begins it’s shift. Mister Mars tells her that “we are floating on a ball in the middle of space” and that “time is precious”.

It irks her enough to change some things but not enough to do what she knows she has to do: detach from her comfort zone. She tries to change herself to “work on” her relationship, but when she realizes that she simply settled, even that becomes not enough.

When she tries to tune in again, she is unable to find anything but static. In a wave of frustration she smashes the radio to bits. The next day, a package arrives from her deceased mother-in-law Rose (Juliet Mills), that she was very close to. In it, is the identical radio she smashed. Shocked, she turns it on, only to hear the voice of her late mother-in-law on the radio talk show.

Source: Glass Cat Productions

Rose talks to Mister Mars about her regrets in life stating that she wished she had figured out that life wasn’t all about working and making the best pies before her body gave out. She also speaks briefly about her hopes for others figuring that out sooner and how her daughter-in-law was soon to join her. This unsettles Nan to tears until she realizes it was a recording from an earlier time.

Will Nan have the courage to make the great change the Universe is calling her to, before it’s too late for her?

In All Honesty…

I loved this.

It’s such a resonate, easily relatable film for most everyone. Who hasn’t felt stuck at some juncture of their lives? What artistic dreamer hasn’t struggled with trying to fit into society with “real jobs”, only to find themselves on the brink of suicide because those jobs crush their souls?

We come into this world as little, perfect beings of light and love, and almost all of us lose our true selves under the tutelage of the broken adults around us. The journey is to find our way back to that light that is within us all. Some take many more lives than others to learn what they need to learn.

It takes a lot of strength and courage to endure the hardships and trial of a broken society and it’s toxic expectations of us, but if we can awaken enough to realize that what we are stuck in is an illusion, we can then take the necessary steps to get ourselves out of it.

Long Time Listener, First Time Caller is a gentle, yet moving call to action. Like lots of humans would, Nan attempts to hold on to what she has known, but when the Universe calls us to action, there’s no stopping it nor nothing for us to do but surrender to its will.

Whether or not we agree with it, it’s always for our best and will always leads us back to our truth.

Summerland: Love Triumphs In A Time of War

There are so many films written about World War Two.

Most of these films are dastardly violent, as most are written by men, about the men fighting in it. Of course WWII was a momentous time in our history, and there have been several gorgeously made films about people’s struggles during this time, but the topic is a bit of a dead horse.

Because of this, I was hesitant to review this film, mainly because I am highly opposed to remakes and films filled with much of what has already been done.

However, Writer/Director Jessica Swale explores a new approach to this time, without making the war the focus. Instead, she composes a lesser seen centerpiece of this genre: Life living outside the war and one of love triumphing over great odds.

That is something that, especially in this day and age, we need to see a lot more of.

The Calm Amidst the Storm

Source: IFC Films

Alice (Gemma Arterton) is a loner living in a quaint cottage on the stunning white cliffs near Dover. Unlike most women of the day she is unmarried and focused heavily upon her writing, instead of family. This, of course, draws judgement and rumors about her from the people within the village.

Her life instantly changes, when she is called upon to care for Frank (Lucas Bond), an evacuee of London’s Blitz. Unprepared for any relationship, let alone a child, she rejects him and tries to pawn him off on someone else. Obstacles present themselves; Alice doesn’t get her way, which, like in a lot of films, turns out to be for her own good.

Though she’s cantankerous and hard on Frank at first, Alice finds that she has a lot in common with this young expellee and a true bond starts to form.

Lost Love

Throughout the story with Frank, we get to see the reason why Alice is so sullen and isolated. Interwoven flash backs tell the story of Alice’s long lost love Vera (Gugu Mbatha-Raw), a relationship beautifully portrayed by both Mbatha-Raw and Arterton.

Source: IFC Films

It’s a tender story of true love and some of the hardships they face attempting to manage a same sex relationship back when being queer was wholly untolerated.

Though they both love each other completely, Vera desires to be a mother above anything else. Given no other viable choice than to marry a man, Vera sets off on her own.

Broken-hearted, Alice never loves again and becomes the recluse we see at the start. Will they ever be reunited? Will Alice be able to overcome her grief enough to open her heart to Frank?

In All Honesty…

Summerland is a splendid, original film made the way they used to be. Back when Hollywood still produced actual originals, one could have seen a film like this on a lazy summer weekend.

It is full of heart, honesty, beauty and breathtaking cinematography. Arterton and Mbatha-Raw give poignant performances worthy of accolades. Their chemistry tingles and their longing is heart wrenching.

Source: IFC Films

They mastered the stages of love, starting with the electric nervousness of the first meeting to the agony and anguish of separation. Some might say that it is too sentimental and “sappy”, but they would clearly be the cynics who have never experienced true love, written in the stars.

Swale weaves in a good dose of folklore and earthly magic, getting Alice and audiences back in touch with their inner child. Though not based on a book, the film has all of the qualities of an engaging, period piece novel. Its locations are magnificent and liberating. From the white cliffs and rocky beaches, to the enchanting, rolling, green hills of England, it’s an escape for all of the senses.

The impassioned performances by Arterton and Mbatha-Raw brought me to tears, making me ache to see the characters reunited, in a perilous time where lives could be changed in seconds. It pushed to the forefront the heartbreaking reality of LGBTQ people living in this time, who could never freely express their love.

It was refreshing to experience a WWII story about people living their lives away from the violence of war. Summerland brings a sense of hope and belief that the power of love is greater than all of the ugliness of hate.

That is something we all need to hold on to when inevitable dark times persist. For love is what we truly are; all that we are seeking and the only thing worth fighting for.

Relic: A Film as Bewildering as Its Subject

Warning: Spoilers!

Natalie Erika James’s first feature debut attempts to bring to life the “monster” that is dementia. Though the film was technically crafted very well and I really wanted to like it, the overall story and its metaphors ultimately clarified nothing and lead me into greater confusion.

Lost

Kay (Emily Mortimer) receives a call from her mother Edna’s (Robyn Nevin) neighbor, asking if she knows where Edna is. Since Kay hasn’t spoken to Edna in a while, she and her daughter Sam (Bella Heathcote) decide to go to her house and check in on her.

Upon arrival, the house is in disarray. Nothing has been fixed or cleaned in a while and there is no sign of Edna. Kay and Sam notice random sticky notes around the house that Edna has left for herself to remind herself of various things she needs to do.

Kay and Sam decide to stay in the house and look for Edna. When they don’t find her in the house or on the property, Kay goes to the police and they begin an unsuccessful group search for her. When Edna magically reappears in her kitchen, she cannot tell Kay where she was, either because she can’t remember or she simply doesn’t want to.

Kay becomes very concerned with her mother’s ailing mind and health and decides that Edna may need more one on one care that she simply can’t deliver full time. When Sam finds out that Kay is looking to put Edna into an assisted living facility, she tells Edna and Kay that she will become Edna’s caretaker.

Source: IFC Midnight

Dazed in The Maze

Kay has a couple of disturbing dreams about her great grandfather and the small hut outside the house where he once lived. He too died from dementia and Kay is unwilling to face the “rot” that is slowly consuming her family members.

Meanwhile, Sam talks to Edna’s neighbors Alex (Jeremy Stanford) and his son Jamie (Chris Bunton) to try and figure out the mystery of what was happening in the house. All that Alex can report is that he stopped allowing Jamie to visit Edna because Edna had (accidently?) locked Jamie in her closet and forgot him there.

Both Sam and Kay have already experienced a lot of unexplained thumps in the walls and other strange happenings in the house, so Sam decides to investigate Edna’s closet more closely. Sure enough, Alex’s story checks out as there are still scratch marks inside the closet door, where Jamie was trying to get out.

As Sam approaches the back of the closet, she finds that it leads her into a living labyrinth within the walls and she becomes trapped seemingly by the house itself. When Kay follows Edna into the closet, she too falls victim to the house. Kay and Sam then must work together to get out of the “endless” maze, all while being pursued by Edna, who is quickly decompensating and decomposing into the “monster” inside of her.

Will Kay and Sam be able to save Edna from this vicious illness or will they, too, fall prey to it?

In All Honesty…

Source: IFC Midnight

I have questions. Lots of them.

First and foremost, why does the one character with a disability, Jamie, represented by an actual person with a disability, yet portraying a character where the role finally isn’t all about their disability, have to be called a “retard”. I get that Edna is decompensating, but there are ample words and phrases to insult someone without it being about their disability. It is irresponsible and there is no excuse for that when people with disabilities are actively fighting for proper representation in all aspects of film and television as it is.

It appears that James attempted to make the dementia a living embodiment. But is its physicality the house or is it the mysterious dark figure we see from time to time?

If the house and its labyrinth of walls within the closet is a metaphor for the confusion and terror that dementia wraps the victim and their family members in, then is the labyrinth supposed to technically be a representation of Edna’s mind? If so and she “gets lost” within it, that wouldn’t warrant police presence, reports or a physical search outside the house. She’s still lost in “the house”.

How, also, does Sam physically get lost in Edna’s metaphor, three dimensional or not? She is not in Edna’s mind ever, so would be unable to experience that confusion literally or metaphorically. She could only attempt to understand Edna’s turmoil from the outside. Therefore, the closet should’ve remained locked to her and the terror should’ve manifested itself to her and Kay differently.

The “monster” rots the entire house and the physical skin of Edna as it takes over, but how does an outside person, like the visiting doctor (Catherine Glavicic), who isn’t part of any of this, also physically see the decay on Edna’s skin? Clearly she would understand the “decay” of dementia, but if this was a familial, living, 3D metaphor, no one else but the family should be able to see the physical manifestations.

Source: IFC Midnight

As much as this film attempts to become the new The Babadook, it fails to accomplish being a stand alone film, beyond the metaphor, like The Babadook did. The Babadook creature is a physical manifestation for the mother’s depression but no one except she and her son can see or hear it. That makes sense because her depression affects them the most. Even without considering all of its metaphors, the creature haunting them is terrifying enough, with the film’s craftily planned scares, to be a stand alone horror film.

The most horrifying part of Relic is it’s script, or possibly it is just the way the final cut was edited. Either way, it relies too heavily on metaphor that is not expertly mapped out to be considered a stand alone, enjoyable film of any genre. Metaphor should serve the film, not try to be the film.

The “scares”, all throughout, were paltry and ho hum. Though it seemed James had something truly unique in the labyrinth scene that lead me to believe that there would be a shocking, breath taking crescendo, it ultimately didn’t pay off and the film deflated like a flatulent balloon.

I wish the script/the way the film was put together, had complimented and partnered with Charlie Saroff’s elegant cinematography and the rest of the film’s technical beauty, but it unfortunately got lost and fell flat within its own demented obscurity.

This is not a horror film, nor is it a drama. It seemed Relic’s own foundations were much too shaky and unclear to materialize into a solid piece in and of itself. Perhaps I simply didn’t “get it”, and, if so, that still falls upon the film’s creators to get their message through in some cohesive way.

It left me feeling disappointed and as confused as it’s subject.

Relic opens for streaming and VOD on July 10, 2020

Asian Americans: The Omitted History of How Asian Americans Helped Shape America

Welcome to May and Asian Pacific Heritage Month!

Asian Americans is a stunning, five part series, narrated by Daniel Dae Kim and Tamlyn Tomita, that chronicles the lives and contributions of select Asian Americans who dared to make a difference. No different than any other Americans, most of them were inspired towards making better lives in the country that they loved and help build.

From the immigrants who came to America seeking freedom from tyranny and war to the generations who grew up here facing vicious racism and violence, one thing that’s certain, America as we know it would not exist without their contributions.

“Breaking Ground”-1850’s-1920’s

The first episode recounts the early surge of Asians immigrating to America. Many from China were lured in by the Gold Rush, but by the time they came, much of that rush was over. At the same time, the First Transcontinental railroad was being built. 80-90% of the construction crew was made of Chinese immigrants.

These immigrants sacrificed everything working in horrifying conditions for very little money. They literally blasted through mountains, risking cave-ins and weathering the unpredictable climates only to be excluded from a historical photo, and the history books once the railways were connected and complete.

Post railway work, the Chinese seeking to settle here faced terrifying racism, and, due to the perceived threat that the Chinese were taking American jobs, the US government set up the Chinese Exclusion Act, which was the first time in American history that a group of people were banned from entering the country solely on race. They became the first “illegal immigrants” due to their lack of documentation caused by restrictions inflicted by racist laws.

Source: PBS

Sikhs and Muslims also started to migrate to America at this time. Many worked as silk traders and traveling peddlers going town to town, dazzling American buyers with the exotic products from their country. Many from India also migrated to America to free themselves from British rule.

Numerous Asians in this time identified, in America, as “White” because only Black and White American could be naturalized. Due to more systemic, despicable racism, Black Americans were considered the bottom of the hierarchy of race so Asians did not want to identify with that. However, “Whiteness” was determined by the courts, so if one was not deemed white, they stood to lose their land, home and entitlements.

Some Asian families did succeed despite these impossible odds but all of them faced overwhelming discrimination and the threat of death.

Anna May

Source: PBS

I wanted to highlight one of the most astonishing Asian American women of this time period. Anna May Wong is considered to be the first Chinese American movie star. Her career included silent film, Talkies, theater, radio and television. Though she was considered a major movie star, she was still subject to the racism inflicted by White Americans.

Along with Japanese American matinee idol Sessue Hayakawa, any and all actors of color were portrayed as either submissives or evil. The film The Good Earth was touted to be one of the first inclusive Asian film epics. Anna May was offered an audition, but only for a supporting role as an evil wife. The leads went to white actors in “Yellow Face”, even though Anna May was the only one of Chinese descent. In the end, that supporting role also went to a white actress and two of the white actors portraying Yellow Face were nominated for Academy Awards.

“A Question of Loyalty” and “Good Americans”: 1930’s-1960’s

Source: PBS

The next two episodes chronicle the struggle of Asian Americans during World War II through the Cold War.

Asian Americans were still not able to be naturalized or vote. Even well educated Asian men couldn’t get hired in jobs considered to be “white jobs”. However this was the time of the first, American born generation of Asian Americans.

Japanese Americans born in America at this time, were known as the “Nisei”, or second generation. The Nisei were very proud of their country and wanted everything that other Americans did. But because of the rueful way they were treated by whites, many Nisei began to show more interest in their country of origin because there, they were treated as equals.

After the attack on Pearl Harbor, Japanese Americans were shuttled off to concentration camps across the nation. They were separated from their families and locked away under the unwarranted fear that they were loyal to Japan even though 2/3 of the people in the camps were born in America.

Korean Americans and others were subjected to cruelty based on racist perceptions that they were Japanese. They had to wear buttons declaring that they were of different descent than the Japanese. There were also great tensions between Korean Americans and Japanese Americans due to Japan’s occupation of South Korea.

Korean American Susan Ahn, pictured with her brothers above, was the first Asian woman to enlist in the US Navy and became its first female gunnery officer. She spent her life serving America and even became a code breaker during Cold War time.

Many of the Asian Americans of this time, including Japanese Americans, who served in WWII for America were still re-imprisoned and treated with disdain, even after putting their lives on the line in the war.

Post WWII, Asian Americans were embraced more as Americans but were still excluded from white suburbs along with other People of Color. The “Go back to your own country” sentiment ran rampant as it still does today.

Only those who lived up to the white stereotype of “Good Asians”-i.e. being compliant; educated; having top notch jobs etc-were allowed to live in relative peace.

Meanwhile, Mao Zedung’s takeover of China and the Korean War sparked a whirlwind of anti-communist sentiments throughout America and most of the world. Again, people of Asian descent were suspected of ill deeds and punished, justified through the United State’s “Red Scare”.

Lives, businesses and entire industries were destroyed with no validation or evidence.

“Generation Rising” and “Breaking Through”: 1960’s Onward

Source: PBS

Emerging through the most recent decades, the show takes on the Phillipine American migrant farmers of California and the uprisings that ensued for fair working conditions and better pay. Most of these workers were not naturalized, therefore, subject to horrific circumstances that those with rights by the law didn’t have to suffer.

When the White grape farm owners brought in Mexican laborers to replace the striking Philippinos, shortly after, the Mexicans joined in the fight, which gave rise to Phillipino leader Larry Itilong and the better known Cesar Chavez.

Over in Hawaii, a greater amount of Asians become political. With an overwhelming majority, here Asians and Indigenous Hawaiians were able to make greater gains. Of course women still struggled behind the men and were mostly shunned from political office and other white collar jobs. In 1964, after years of struggle, Patsy Mink becomes the first Woman of Color in Congress.

Patsy Mink. Source: ITVS.org

The show then takes a turn toward the Vietnam War and the multitudes of Asian Americans who sacrificed for America both in the war and those at home fighting against it, who shifted the cultural landscape of the US. Post the war, followed a boom of immigration from Southeast Asia and another wave of perpetual racism. Once again, these new immigrants faced racist backlash, as did other Asian Americans mistaken as South Asian.

Wrapping everything up, are the racial tensions of early 1990’s Los Angeles that precipitated the Riots in Koreatown, the tech boom of Silicon Valley and the dawn of the Dream Act.

In All Honesty…

Asian Americans is an incredible starting point to shedding some light on the awe-inspiring contributions made by the United State’s immigrants. Even with an astonishing amount of information packed meticulously in this series, it’s not enough.

I was confounded by how much of our country’s history and people have been excluded from general school curriculum. I felt that there was more, much more, on this subject alone that wasn’t addressed. As a series, Asian Americans  was only able to tell a handful of the remarkable stories of courage, determination, honor and grit regarding our Asian immigrants. As someone who grew up and was educated in America I feel astoundingly cheated. None of this was taught to us and it makes me angry.

I was also taken aback, but not surprised, about all of the heart breaking, despicably racist acts forced upon a people just looking for freedom and a better way of life. It made me so livid and sad at times that I had to stop watching just to handle all of the emotion burning through me.

The worse part about this is that literally nothing has changed. We may have laws now that “protect” minorities from certain discriminations, but that doesn’t stop them from happening. What have we learned from imprisoning nearly 130,000 Japanese Americans? Nothing.

Now the newest deemed “threat” is from Mexican and Latin American immigrants who also flee horrifying circumstances for a better life. New federal data from 2019 shows nearly a million arrests made at the US-Mexico border alone, the highest reported since 2007. Human beings are in detention facilities across the US as we speak in horrible conditions. Is this ringing a bell? It seems to me that White people are, and have always been the greatest threat to this country and many more across the world.

Source: PBS

Why don’t humans learn? Why must we be susceptible to relive the same, tired, ignorant actions that have held us back and harmed us collectively in the past? When will any of us realize how much we need one another and also that ANY land across this beautiful planet doesn’t inherently belong to any of us?

Asian Americans is full of stories that need to be told and taught on a regular basis in school curriculum alongside the innumerable stories of those enslaved, murdered and exploited under the tyranny of White “supremacy” and colonization.

It is a documentary told through the eyes of Asian Americans and the lineages built through brave souls enduring hell for the promise of a better life. It is the history of our world and our country. It stands as a legacy to those it features and highlights the suffering, courage and accomplishments of a great people.

I cannot overstate the necessity of documentaries and series that explore topics like these. When we focus all of our time and attention on one view, race and gender, we become lost as a collective. How can we ever come together as a whole if we never get to see the whole picture?

Asian Americans airs on PBS in the US, May 11th and 12th, 2020, starting at 8pm each night.