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...
A Note From Our Editor-in-Chief BY MONIKA ESTRELLA NEGRA The end of 2021 is bittersweet. As we head into our third year of the Covid-19 pandemic, a lot of us are feeling unsure about the future holds for us. It is said that art often imitates life,...
BY ALEX SMITH “What’d I do today? Oh my god, I got some new jeans.” This triumphant opening line is the start to Brontez Purnell’s 100 Boyfriends Mixtape, the first moment we see the film’s lone subject: a gay Black man named DeShawn, played by Purnell...
BY HANSEN BURSIC In the movement for abolition, new media narratives are vital to combating years of misinformation. Yet, due to a lack of collaboration with movement leaders, many documentaries on topics like the prison industrial complex end up failing abolition activists because they do not...
BY DIANA LU The Philadelphia Asian American Film Festival—the largest of its kind on the East coast—returns for its 14th year. The 2021 festival goes hybrid, with many impressive showcases and panels of diverse filmmakers both IRL and in the comfort of your home. What...
BY MARIAM DEMBELE Maya Cade, the founder of the Black Film Archive–an online register of Black film from 1915 through 1979–shares her journey creating the archive, the excitement she’s received since its launch, and her hopes for its future. Maya is an audience strategist for the Criterion...
BY DANI BETHEA The Candyman story of 1992 shows a housing project in decline with the threat of ‘urban renewal’ constantly in the rearview mirror; today, that renewal exists as hundred-thousand-dollar condominiums and a Target shopping center where the infamous high-rises once stood. In the span...
BY GABE CASTRO “We will now purge. We will torture you and violate your flesh. Remove your skin and share in your blood. This is the American way.” - Uncle Sam (Purge: Election Year) For nearly a decade, the fictional murderous release known as the Purge has...