BY SOPHIA ABRAHAM-RAVESON The cinéSPEAK Journal publishes a monthly Philadelphia Artist Spotlight highlighting local filmmakers and moving image artists doing unique and impactful work. Bilal Motley is a writer, producer, actor, husband, and father from the Greater Philadelphia Area. He is especially interested in films that explore...
BY KRISTAL SOTOMAYOR The Velocity Fund, which is administered by Philadelphia Contemporary, distributes $60,000 in grants each cycle to support Philadelphia-based artists. The fund has a particular focus on experimental, collaborative, and interdisciplinary practices. In its fifth cycle, the Velocity Fund has funded 64 projects--more than...
BY ALEX SMITH From its opening scene, Sorry to Bother You is an explosive treatise on capitalism, American bootstrap culture, and how capital-driven systems work to crush, rearrange, and dehumanize the human spirit. Told through the lens of cleverly-monikered Cassius Green (LaKeith Stanfield), a young Black...
BY KATHIA WOODS South by Southwest started as a music festival in 1987, and the music segment of the festival is still the largest attraction. However, the film festival presents an opportunity for filmmakers to network with brands, industry experts, and other technology innovators in addition...
BY M TÉLLEZ **Spoilers Alert** During the first great plague of the 21st century, Hollywood took to producing Don’t Look Up, an engrossing film about a comet striking the Earth and all of humanity too caught up reacting to their social media feeds to stop it....
BY RASHEED AJAMU **Content Warning: Spoilers Alert** Flee (Directed by Danish filmmaker, Jonas Poher Rasmussen and co-written by his friend and the film's protagonist, Amin Nawabi) is an animated docudrama where the protagonist must reconcile with his past before he commits to love and marries his...
BY DALÍ ADEKUNLE Three-fourths of the way into the documentary about singer, choreographer, and tap-dancing extraordinaire Maurice Hines, American playwright Charles Randolph-Wright wistfully reminisces about Mr. Hines’ impact on the Black theater scene of his time. Randolph-Wright recounts, "At that time, Maurice was the den mother,...
BY AARON HUNT Every day before filming, director Snow Hnin Ei Hlaing and her cinematographer Thae Zar Chi Kang crossed a military checkpoint into a village in Rakhine State. Hlaing grew up here; her auntie even introduced her to the eponymous midwives, Hla and Nyo-Nyo. But...
BY AARON HUNT Sundance 2022 debuted some surprising films among otherwise conventional indie fare. But the festival’s better selections can feel out of place. Modern-day ethnographies like Jihad Rehab contradict correctives like Listen to the Beat of Our Images, which fills the lacuna of native historical...
BY JOHN MORRISON In director Maritte Lee Go’s coming of age vampire flick, Black As Night, one young girl must overcome her own self doubt and fear in order to save her hometown from a new threat whose roots run deep into the city’s old and...