Mydylarama Podcast

In this episode, journalist and film critic Leila Latif talks about her coup de coeur pick from a season of Arab women filmmakers season at the Garden Cinema in London - Nadine Labaki's Capernaum. We talk about the importance of the film, its sensitive and sober depiction of poverty, its positive reviews and those that called it overblown or manipulative, and what this says about Western stereotypes of the Arab world. We also talk about Sudanese film, Saleh Bakri's always charismatic turns in Wajib and The Blue Caftan and nod to Wissam Aljafari's short Ambience.

In the spirit of shedding light on all the great (and not-so great), imaginative and impressive films being made by the independent sector the world over, I spoke to Jack Brindelli from Indy Film Library, a platform that supports and reviews independent, under-celebrated or little-known films. The Indy Film Library is now a member of the Independent Media Association and they have an online and live mini-fest coming up end of April. The live element will be in Amsterdam. Jack wanted to flag three shorts that will be shown. Get your online tickets here! Jack also talks about this year's highlights, including Jordan Peele's Nope and mentions analysing the film Pontypool, as part of a video essay. Pontypool, an unusual cultish zombie low budget flick is available to watch on YouTube.

"A Lana Del Rey video as directed by the press manager for the Coalition for Families". Animator Nadia Barbu joins us for scathing review of Blonde. Nadia is an award winning animation filmmaker and illustrator. You can see her work here.  *Trigger warning* We discuss the film's depiction of abortion and miscarriage.

This is the recording of the discussion and some music following the screening of Fragments of a Dream at Rich Mix on 19 January 2023. Dr Francisco Dominguez talks to us about the current situation in Chile and what we can do to counter the various far right movements around the world and imperialism, musician Phaxsi Coca treats us to some entrancing live music and the film's co-directors tell us about their work, the Dream Lives On festival in Wales that celebrates Latin American music and peace in the spirit of Chilean activist Victor Jara. The screening was organised by Alborada - a magazine providing a progressive look at Latin American culture, arts and politics and their film arm, Alborada Films - and Movimientos, an organisation that hosts cultural and artistic Latin American events.

We were delighted to chat with Nana Mensah, director, writer and actress. Her first feature film Queen Of Glory, in which she also stars, met with much critical acclaim and was praised for its astute, unsentimental and at times downright hilarious portrayal of a Ghanian family in the US and high achieving academic daughter. We chat about her foray into filmmaking, how she made use of available resources, recent work by emerging filmmakers and artists of African origin(s) in and she shares her experience on the relationship friends and family of Ghanaian and other African origins have with the US.  If you like our work and want to support us, please go to: ko-fi.com/mydy  

"What unites these documentaries is that they both believe in a meritocracy"   Summer break is officially over... In this episode, we discuss the problem of student debt in the US, the very specific ways it affects Black Americans and the elitism of higher education, through: - The Intercept documentary Freedom Dreams: Black Women and the Student Debt Crisis, narrated by former Ohio state Sen. Nina Turner, a longtime ally of the growing debt abolition movement, which looks at the crippling student debt in the US specifically affects Black women. You can watch it HERE.   - The Netflix documentary called Operation Varsity Blues: The College Admissions Scandal about the 2019 college admissions bribery scandal. The doc is a mix of re-eactements and real life interviews, and stars Matthew Modine as Rick Singer. It depicts the scandal surrounding the uncovering of a scam run by a private college councillor and “adviser” Rick Singer, who used bribes and doctored photographs to get rich people's kids into elite universities.   The issues we take with both docs is that they don't quite address some of the more fundamental, systemic inequalities, which mean that tackling the debt crisis in this way, or condemning Rick Singer's "side doors" into higher education just isn't enough.    Here is some additional reading on the subject that will hopefully help you gain more context:    Black Student Debt 7 findings that illustrate racial disparities in education https://www.brookings.edu/blog/brown-center-chalkboard/2016/06/06/7-findings-that-illustrate-racial-disparities-in-education/   Degree Attainment for Black Adults: National and State Trends  https://edtrust.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/Black-Degree-Attainment_FINAL.pdf   How Black Women Experience Student Debt https://edtrust.org/resource/how-black-women-experience-student-debt/   Raising Undergraduate Degree Attainment Among Black Women and Men Takes on New Urgency Amid the Pandemic https://edtrust.org/resource/national-and-state-degree-attainment-for-black-women-and-men/   Student loans, the racial wealth divide, and why we need full student debt cancellation https://www.brookings.edu/research/student-loans-the-racial-wealth-divide-and-why-we-need-full-student-debt-cancellation/   The Student Debt Crisis? It's Infinitely Worse for Black Women https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/student-debt-black-women/   Unequal Opportunity: Race and Education https://www.brookings.edu/articles/unequal-opportunity-race-and-education/  

More Q&As! As Coco Green gets stuck in the final chapters of her PhD, we take a break from our usual format to publish Q&As and whatever audio output we fancy.  To mark our partnership with the Clermont-Ferrand International Film Festival and celebrate short films, we had a chat with Philip Ilson, founder and director of the London Short Film Festival, and film programmer (for the BFI, amongst others) . We talk about film clubs in the 1990s, the festival's early days, programming freedom and short films to look out for.  Follow Philip on Twitter @philipilson and updates from the London Short Film Festival here.  If you like our work and want to support us, please go to: ko-fi.com/mydy  

As we take a short break from our usual, very long-form format, we decided to post audio interviews and content via our podcast channel.  Abla and Mydy contributor and chillout music expert Eddy Durnan sent a series of questions to ambient music maestro Phondupe, whose transportative sounds have provided much-needed escapism to many in the last couple of years. The musician, whose wider known titles include Ama and Silo, tells us more about his work, inspiration, travels and ambitions. We're also publishing this in written form on our website.  We also now FINALLY have a jingle! Impressions welcome. Comments @mydylarama via Twitter or any of the podcast platforms!

We're back!! We took a couple of months' break for me to get over the chaos of the first few weeks of having a newborn (my second - still chaotic!). We're delighted to have Akua Gyamfi join us this week to discuss her work and her top picks. Akua is the founder of The British Blacklist . She's also the creator of the TBB Talks & Your Aunties Could Never Podcasts, as well as co-creator of The Circle Podcast & Web series. Akua's top picks include the Prince Of Bel-Air reboot and the film she chose to discuss is Spike Lee's Crooklyn. We discuss the tone of the film, the depiction of familial relationships and female characters, the fate of daughter Troy, Black cultural output in the US and the UK, the prevalence of Black American popular culture. We also share anecdotes about MC Hammer and get schooled about what the Bay Area is! Here's a useful link to Tonetalks, which is relevant to our discussion. https://youtu.be/2m63A9dmRM8  

*MIC ISSUES* Apologies for the less than stellar quality of sound in this week's podcast. We had a minor missing mic issue which has been resolved. Also to look forward to, in the new year, we'll finally have a jingle! This time, we focus on Amazon Prime doc LuLaRich, which follows the trials and tribulations of MLM empire LuLaRoe, a supposed garish legging selling business that operates as a pyramid scheme in all but name. We discuss the doc itself of course and the problematic nature of multi-level marketing schemes, who they appeal to and why. We also flag the upcoming Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival, the largest short film festival in the world. Mydylarama has been a partner of the event for 5 years now so you'll be able to find interviews and highlights from February onwards on our website.   

We jumped straight into this week's picks: Dave Chappelle's Netflix show The Closer - we discuss the various contentious issues that had been raised, the concept of punching down - or up - , taking offence, who holds power and critiques of whiteness.  Passing - Does Rebecca Hall's adaptation live up to the book? We discuss casting choices, the American specificity of the phenomenon of passing and the director's perspective on it.   

After a couple of weeks' break for LFF,  we are joined by guest Eddy Durnan, a Mydy subscriber, supporter, and a film buff with a long-standing career in visual effects to talk about (the somewhat maligned) Malignant.  A trip down memory lane brings up discussions around Dirty Dancing and Pretty Woman... 

This week, our focus is the series Little Fires Everywhere. Based on the book by Celeste Ng, the miniseries tells the intertwined stories of Black single mother artist Mia and White suburban housewife Elena and their ramifications. It's a series that's rich and complex in perspectives, strands and ideas. We discuss issues it brings up around privilege and motherhood, adoption and abortion, mixed race friendships and the social capital needed to navigate certain systems, like the courts and schools. We also flag the BBC documentary series A Killing In Tiger Bay, which sheds light on the miscarriage of justice, which saw 5 Black men tried - and 3 of them sentenced - for a crime they did not commit, through a shocking lack of evidence and due process. Support us:

More Slasher talk! We go back in time to Series 2 this time to discuss gore, twists, popularity and the show's knack for realistic edges. We also highlight Shiny_Flakes: The Teenage Drug Lord, available to watch on Netflix.  Our focus this week is Zola, a brash, colourful, ballsy filmic take on a viral Twitter thread by stripper Aziah "Zola" King and the Rolling Stone article based on it "Zola Tells All: The Real Story Behind the Greatest Stripper Saga Ever Tweeted".  We discuss the film's experimental approach and bold choices as well as depictions of sex workers and the world both inhabited and conveyed by Zola, as well as making a career out of social media. 

This week, we focus mainly on the third season of serial killer anthology Slasher, to mark the release of season 4 on Shudder. We touch on the excesses of social media, lynch mob mentality, accurate socio-economic depictions and plot twists! Our top picks include Palestine Action - A Year Of Direct Action Against Elbit Systems UK by Real Media, a doc which as its title suggests explores the effective tactics of direct action. It's free to watch on their website.  As well as 2018 film Trial By Fire, wacky doc The Legend Of Cocaine Island and M. Night Shyamalan's recent release OLD.   

We're back! Our latest episode following our month-long break managed to bring together our regular go to topics: MLMs, cults and skincare. We discuss American series On Becoming a God in Central Florida, starring Kirsten Dunst as a low paid amusement park employee who climbs the rank of a pyramid scheme type marketing company called Fam. We talk about multi-level marketing (MLMs), their legality, their implications for family and society and their history. We briefly mention the series The Path.  We also massively digress onto the topic of skincare. Having discussed MLMs we might as well plug some quality products. For those of you who have listened until the end and are interested, here are the brands mentioned: LUV U skincare and those "amazing" lip balms are these from Zenology.   

This week, we focus on Frontline documentary Being Mortal, in which Boston surgeon Atul Gawande talks to doctors and patients about end of life care. The film highlights the sometimes woeful like of preparation and emotional intelligence shown by doctors and the issues that arise in that critical period.  We also flag Ramin Bahrani's The White Tiger.  The film looks at class and caste divide in India as a poor villager rises up to become a successful entrepreneur. 

*We're skipping ep 23 given the relevance of ep 24 to this month's releases - normal service will resume in 2 weeks!* This week, our guest is Anna Smith, leading film critic and broadcaster and host of the popular podcast Girls On Film. Our focus is women as lead characters in sexually-charged noir films from the 90s to the present day - to the new spate of films that belong to what Anna calls Bubblegum Noir, using Emerald Fennell's Promising Young Woman as a starting point. We also discuss new release Gillian Wallace Horvat's I Blame Society. You can follow Anna on Twitter @annasmithjourno.  Anna's pick of the week is Joanna Scanlan's new film After Love, which is currently on the big screen. Abla's picks include Palestinian arthouse director Elia Suleiman's filmography, available for free for a limited period as an entertaining, moving and actually very informative way into understanding Palestine and the history of Palestinians. As this is limited in time, another release worth flagging is Abby Martin's hugely powerful film Gaza Fights For Freedom, which is now free to watch online! And a series worth watching (if you still haven't been convinced by all the good publicity) is HBO dark crime drama Mare of Easttown, starring Kate Winslet with yet another impeccable performance. 

This week, we discuss the documentary charting the rise and fall of co-working space/real estate scam We Work and its eccentric co-founder Adam Neumann. We cover the ethics of co-working spaces and their implications and the cultish elements of the We Work "experience".  We flag John Carpenter's prescient classic They Live and the Line Of Duty finale. 

Regina King's directorial debut starring Kingsley Ben-Adir as Malcolm X, Eli Goree as Cassius Clay, Aldis Hodge as Jim Brown, and Leslie Odom as Jr. Sam Cooke, is a fictionalised account of the four icons' meeting in Miami, Fl after Clay's first heavyweight title with Sonny Liston. The film is based on the Kemp Powers play which imagines their one night at the Hampton House, located in Brownsville, outside of Liberty City, due to segregation laws in Miami, which was the base for Miami's black performers and celebrities. Its strength lies in the key questions it debates about black struggle and empowerment in 1960s America.  We also bring up the issue of celebrity endorsements of certain causes, the recent British "race report" and casting British actors to play Black Americans.  Top picks include ITV psychological drama Too Close, wacky Nicolas Cage comedy horror Willy's Wonderland (Amazon Prime) and jaw-droppingly bizarre documentary Abducted In Plain Sight (Netflix), as well as the online premiere of short film Savage.  

This week we are joined by psychotherapist Antonella Mercurio to talk about Crip Camp and the issues around activism, aspirational and revolutionary movements and disability rights sparked by the documentary. Crip Camp (Netflix) sheds light on summer camp for teenagers with disabilities and the rights movement borne out of its pioneering set up.  Top picks include horror film The Empty Man, a creepy, hugely entertaining feature released to mostly so-so reviews in 2020 but has built a bit of a cult following, documentary The Story of Gospel Music and Antonella's pick - albeit one she's mildly embarrassed about - reality TV series Below Deck. 

This week, we are joined by poet and writer Ryan Ormonde to discuss Ali LeRoi's feature film The Obituary Of Tunde Johnson that was screened as part of the BFI Flare Festival.  The "timeloop" film which sees Tunde, a young Black gay man who is shot and killed by a police officer, relive his last day on Earth over and over again. We talk about the relationships, Black masculinity, race and of course drift off topic to talk about ice cream and skincare.  Top picks this week include Welsh crime drama Hinterland, Jack Black biographical comedy The Polka King and yet another Jack Black flick, Bernie. As usual, comments and feedback welcome via Twitter @Mydylarama

We're stretching things a bit this week to include filmed theatre: our guest is director Anastasia Osei-Kuffour whose latest production is Typical at the Soho Theatre (available to stream online). The play stars Richard Blackwood as Christopher Alder, a Black man who died in police custody in 1998.  The play, a monologue that's halfway between poetry and rap recounting Christopher's last day and the acts of racism he experiences leading up to his death, highlights issues around racial stereotypes and institutional racism.  We discuss those with Ana as well as the implications of filming theatre and her work with Blackwood.  We flag the last call for short film submissions for the Emerging Filmmakers' Night's Spring edition, the current Media Democracy Festival - Mydy is proud to be a partner of the Independent Media Association - and ITV's crime drama Marcella! As usual, comments and feedback welcome via Twitter @Mydylarama

Highlights this week include the Glasgow Film Festival, entirely online, with its usual strong selection and carefully curated programmes, running from 24 February to 7 March and MLK/FBI is a 2020 American documentary directed by Sam Pollard who co-directed the 1987 doc Eyes on the Prize, which traces the FBI's investigation of Martin Luther King. Obviously Eyes on the Prize comes up as we discuss our main film of the evening: Judas And The Black Messiah directed by Shaka King, a powerful and much-needed portrait of Black Panther Fred Hampton and a dramatised account of the BFI's infiltration of the Black Panthers and subversion of Hampton's community organising, which eventually led to his assassination.  We discuss the history and depiction of the Panthers, the concept of a "rainbow coalition", the professionalisation of community organising and the shift from class/race to identity politics.  As usual, comments and feedback welcome via Twitter @Mydylarama

This week, guest and Mydylarama co-founder Judy Harris joins us to discuss the beauty of amateur cinema, community cohesion, gentrification, colourblind casting and the joys of play in Michel Gondry's Be Kind Rewind.  We also touch on the issues around race and casting choices in Netflix hit show Bridgerton.  When she's not doing revisions on a PhD on the utopian film theory of the poet Vachel Lindsay, which the viva panel described as "conceptually ambitious but let down by its organisation" - a statement which could be applied to her whole life - Judy works with community groups at Hackney CVS. As usual, comments and feedback welcome via Twitter @Mydylarama

This week, we are joined by Georgina Allan, film editor for the Radical Art Review to talk about women in horror, specifically focusing on Julia Ducournau's Raw and Alice Lowe's Prevenge and their representations of women as complex protagonists and instigators of violence (as opposed to helpless victims or mindless monsters).  We mention Jordan Peele's Us, Marina De Van's In My Skin and Don't Look Back and others.  Picks of the week include Aaron Moorhead and Justin Benson's mind warping, beautiful Synchronic and Channel 4 series Adult Material, a three-dimensional, intelligent and nuanced look at the world of porn and the tendrils that reach into all spheres of public and private life.  Finally, we flag the upcoming International Clermont-Ferrand Short Film Festival 29 Jan - 6 Feb - as official partner, Mydylarama will play host to interviews with all competition filmmakers - and Emerging Filmmakers Night's winter edition on 25 Jan, which includes three workshops (funding applications, screenwriting and festival strategy) that are free to join to our subscribers (mydy.link/subscribe).    As usual, comments and feedback welcome via Twitter @Mydylarama

We are joined once again by Tom Barlow, chair of The Media Fund and host of the show News Club UK, to discuss the 2002 documentary series The Century of the Self. The Adam Curtis documentary analyses how Freudian theories are used for ideological control by consumer capitalism and governments. We talk about the implications of conceptualising freedom as autonomy and self-expression; and the conditions for building a  democracy outside of emotional manipulation.   Tom will briefly discuss his pick of the week, BBC series Ladhood.    Antebellum is a 2020 American thriller film written and directed by Gerard Bush and Christopher Renz in their feature directorial debuts. While beautifully shot, Antebellum fails in its attempt explore the sociopathy of the white slaveholding class--mainly because the story isn't set in a slave society. The film can't come to terms with slavery being the basis of capitalism and, as a result, relies on black pain to tell a meaningless story.    As usual, comments and feedback welcome via Twitter @Mydylarama

Before we introduce our picks, we quickly shoehorn in one last point about last week's Three Identical Strangers...This week's top picks include Aaron Sorkin's historical legal drama The Trial Of The Chicago Seven, and Najwa Najjar's Palestinian road trip festival hit Between Heaven And Earth. We discuss the utterly bonkers documentary The Imposter, in which an Algerian-French young man in Spain claims to be a 16-year-old Texan, who'd been missing for 3 years, and Little White Lie, the story of director Lacey Schwartz who grew up in a white family and was not aware that she was a half black until she went to university and her mother came clean about her African American biological father. We explore the pitfalls of affirmative action and the somewhat problematic utilisation of a Black identity by someone who'd been raised as white.  As usual, comments and feedback welcome via Twitter @Mydylarama

New fortnight, new episode. Abla's picks of the week are the brilliant, creepy horror debut Caveat by filmmaker Damian McCarthy and Palestinian film Western Arabs, a chaotic, powerful and very personal look at the impact of displacement, by Omar Shargawi, as both films are reviewed on Mydylarama.  Our festival to watch out for is Documenta Madrid, flagged by Film Fest Report.  Coco's picks were The Lovers And The Despot - a documentary about an actress and her filmmaker husband who were forcibly taken to North Korea by Kim Jong-Il to help develop the country's film industry - and Three Identical Strangers - also a doc, about triplets that were reunited as adults after having been separated at birth for the purposes of a scientific experiment. Both films are on Netflix.  We focus on two feature films: Joe Talbot's The Last Black Man in San Francisco (2019). Centred around a young black man, who with the help of his writer friend tries to reclaim his childhood home in a gentrified part of San Francisco, a home he claims had been built by his grandfather. We talk about the issues around gentrification and the increasing lack of rent control, as well as San Francisco's dwindling Black community.  And One Man And His Shoes (2020), an engaging documentary that came out in October and is now available on iPlayer, which paints the portrait of Michael Jordan's relationship with Nike and the furore around the release of the Air Jordans, and by extension the impact on mainstream Black culture. We discuss Nike's co-option of a certain type of Black culture, its place in the wider context of consumer capitalism and the focus on social corporate responsibility.  We'll have clips of individual reviews up on the Youtube page.  Sign up to our newsletter at the bottom of the homepage.  Comments & feedback at:   @mydylarama on Twitter & Facebook

This week, Abla picks Seduced: Inside the NXIVM Cult, a sort of parallel documentary to the previously discussed The Vow, also about Keith Raniere and NXIVM but more explosive and revelatory and Egyptian horror series Paranormal. She mentions award-winning documentary Tell Spring Not to Come This Year available to watch online all this month here.    Coco Green talks about:  The China Hustle (2017) Like the 2016 documentary Betting on Zero, about short sellers and their suspicions of fraud in the multilevel marketing company Herbalife, The China Hustle has a similar focus, but with Chinese companies running a similar scam. It's believed that many of the reverse merger companies are overvaluing their companies by as much as 1000% to raise money in an IPO. After traders make their commission and companies get the cash, the value drops leaving any existing stockholders with worthless stock. And... Richard Wershe Jr. case White Boy Rick film (2018) White Boy (2017) documentary   Richard Wershe Jr. became an FBI informant at the age of 14—easy stuff like identifying dealers and drug houses in his Detroit neighbourhood.   His father, Richard Wershe Sr., was gun dealer and involved in the criminal world, so he negotiated the paid informant job on his behalf—rationalised it as they were targeting the more dangerous drug dealers   The case stands out because unlike the dirty cops, hired hitmen, and drug kingpins Wershe's testimony and narcing put away, at age 17 his drug dealing saw him receive a life sentence. Ultimately released in 2018 after serving more than 30 years, it's a story of black political power in Detroit. Rick Wershee Jr doesn't have the political, social or economic power to fight his charges—nor was he about to move his whiteness beyond symbolism to access the white neighbourhoods, schools, jobs, and wealth that would've allowed him to serve ‘white time' that he otherwise would've been entitled to.   —————— We discuss:  His House (2020) The film tells the story of a refugee couple from South Sudan settling into English life as they await a decision on their asylum application. Spoiler, to escape the genocide they kidnapped a child to make their way onto a bus that was ahead of soldiers carrying out atrocities. Then, in their journey across the Mediterranian, the boat overturned and the husband, Bol, let the child drown while saving his wife, Rial. They're now haunted by many things, but mostly their descent into brutality in an effort to save their own lives. The Social Dilemma (2019) A docu-fiction on the ills and dangers of social media, which includes talking heads from among the highest echelons of the tech community, many of which were at the helm of major social media networks and have since then left and are critical of the role it plays in disseminating false news, polarising opinion and disintegrating social relations.  ————— Sign up to our newsletter at the bottom of the homepage.  Comments & feedback at:   @mydylarama on Twitter & Facebook

Our guest this week is Phil Miller, investigative journalist and staff reporter at Declassified UK. We discuss the origins of British mercenaries in recent proxy wars and the extent of government culpability in his documentary (and the book it's based on) Keenie Meenie: Britain's Private Army (2020) - available online! We've not been bawled over by any films so we're only highlighting a couple of festivals to watch out for this week: IDFA - the Amsterdam documentary film festival, one of the biggest in the world, which will be live and online and which Film Fest Report reminded us is taking place in November; and - yet again - the Palestine Film Festival who are holding a short but very strong series of screenings on 13-26 November 2020 at the Barbican in London and online, featuring surveillance camera-based doc An Unusual Summer, Cannes hit Gaza Mon Amour, Najwa Najjar's latest offering from a consistently brilliant filmography, more from Ameen Nayfeh, Lina Alabed... so many more names that attest to the vibrancy and excellence of the Palestinian film scene.    @mydylarama on Twitter & Facebook

A longer episode than usual in which we are joined by Media Fund Strategic Coordinator Thomas Barlow. Among the many other things he does is conducting anti-fascist history tours  in his home city of Manchester! Tom chose to focus on themes of revolution and social change in sci-fi, with a particular focus on Elysium, The Expanse and Battlestar Galactica. We discuss how the film and series creators depict the agents of change, the use of a single hero-like protagonist as opposed to the class of workers or oppressed characters taking things into their own hands. We touch on the lionisation of individual figures and the problematic lack of representation of collective action, which brings us to older representations of working class characters in UK and US TV in the 1970s and 1980s, how shows in the 1990s such as Deep Space 9 depicted UN-like diplomatic unions as the answer, cynical superhero series and escapism in films like The Matrix, and the links with conspiracy theorists.  We've got a slightly longer top picks section - We look at Miss Juneteenth , independent horror (?) film Saint Maud, UK/US series Utopia, Nora From Queens, available on BBCiPlayer, Keenie Meenie, an investigative doc about Britain's largest mercenary company and quickly flag The Haunting (and not The Curse!) Of Bly Manor on Netflix and Grayson Perry's Big American Road Trip. Phew!  As mentioned in the podcast, you can find our reviews of our Encounters Film Festival top picks on our website!   Follow us and comment! @mydylarama on Twitter & Facebook

This week's focus is colonial chic in light of the touted and actual removal of Gone with the Wind (1939) from a number of programmes and archives due to its racist outlook. We discuss themes of colonialism and postcolonialism through film, namely the above and Jane Austen's work, and their filmic representations. As the saying goes, it's not what you're looking at, it's what you see. Our picks this week are the Encounters Film Festival—GET YOUR PASS—and its expert, sharp-eyed curating—only £10 gives you access to hundreds of excellent and very entertaining short films, as well as discussions, Q&As and so on; and the Nordisk Panorama, which showcases Nordic feature documentaries and short films. The festival will be over by the time this comes out, but do check the website to browse the winning docs and archives. And lastly, a treat for genre fans, horror and fantastic festival Grimmfest, which is completely online this year and boasts new films, old films, and for the first time a cool-looking comic! Abla mentions a couple of series: The Vow, available on HBO, a mind-boggling expose of MLM-cum-self-improvement course-cum mad sex cult NXIVM and its incredibly underwhelming leader Keith Raniere—and the BBC miniseries Des, David Tennant's uncanny portrayal of serial killer Dennis Nilsen.   Follow us and comment! @mydylarama on Twitter & Facebook

This week we are joined by Matt Howsam, a production coordinator in the VFX industry and a film critic. We mention the hilarious and highly original One Cut of the Dead (2017) by Shin'ichirô Ueda, a Japanese Zombie comedy in the style of some of the best mockumentaries out there and a homage to low budget filmmaking. Depending on where you are you can watch it on Shudder or buy the DVD. Abla also highlights the Netflix series Unwell (2020– ), which looks at the dark side of the wellness industry and some of the products and concepts currently being flogged on the market through – yet again – more MLM initiatives.  For our festival picks, this week we recommend Visionmaker's Indigenous Filmmakers Festival, which runs from 31 August to 5 October, the Encounters Short Film Festival, one of the world's best short ff, which runs from 18 September to 11 October and is offering a £10 pass! A few films to highlight are Mahdi Fleifel's 3 Logical Exits, Clermont-Ferrand Grand Prize winner Anthony Nti's Da Yie and Morad Mostapha's Henet Ward. Matt recommends Women Make Films (2019), a 14-hour doc series and the Japanese cinema season, both on BFI Player.  Matt chose to discuss Trey Edward Shults's Waves (2019), a dizzying and theatrical film about a family dealing with the aftermath of a tragedy. We discuss the highly cinematic and aesthetic qualities of the film, the impact that has on the emotional punch of the story and the portrayal of the characters, and the somewhat problematic or baffling portrayal of family dynamics that are very personal to the (white) director through the prism of a black family.  We briefly mention the Chinese drama So Long, My Son (2019) in our conclusive remarks.  If you like our work, you can support us at mydy.link/support.  Follow us @mydylarama on Twitter & Facebook   Follow us and comment!

This week, Coco and Abla interview documentary filmmaker and journalist Pablo Navarrete. Pablo's latest film No Extradition is a record of the campaign of support for Julian Assange who is facing extradition to the US. He also follows John Shipton, Assange's father, over several months as he fought to secure his son's release from Belmarsh prison in the UK. The filmmaker, whose first documentary "Inside the Revolution: A Journey into the Heart of Venezuela" dates from 2009, was working for Telesur when he collated most of the film's footage.  We also talk to Pablo about his previous film Hip Hop Revolucion (2015), in which he travels to Venezuela with rapper Lowkey and activist Jody McIntyre and meets hip hop artists and political activists. He is founder and editor of Alborada.net, (another Media Fund partner) where you'll find more on his work and updates.  Abla's picks this week include a number of film festivals: the Deauville American Film Festival, which will be held in the city's venues,  the White Deer International Film Festival (FREE) and Open City Doc Festival, both of which are online this year, with a varied selection of films and some great talks. (Thanks Film Fest Report for the tips!), and the Australian International Film Festival. Finally, she flags the investigative series Dirty Money (S2, 2020), available to watch on Netflix.  If you like what we do, support us at mydy.link/support.    Follow us and comment! @mydylarama on Twitter & Facebook

For this episode of Mydylarama's Top Picks podcast, we're joined by our guest, academic, film programmer and Japanese Avant-Garde and Experimental Film Festival producer George Crosthwait.  George's pick of the week, and also his first trip back to the cinema since February, is Shannon Murphy's debut film Babyteeth (2019),  an Australian coming-of-age drama that both impressed and confused him due to it's tonal eccentricities. Abla's picks of the week include Richard Pryor: Omit The Logic (2013), now available on Sky, a pretty engaging and informative documentary about the comedian's life, and a couple of festivals to look out for: the Cologne International Film Festival, whose first - and entertainingly eclectic - edition will run 11-12 September 2020 across various venues in the city, and the London Kurdish Film Festival (15-24 August), offering a collection of 50 screenings carefully curated into various themes, all available ONLINE and for FREE!  George's choice for this episode take the podcast deep into the beehive for Beyoncé's ambitious new visual album 'Black is King'. A kaleidoscopic collage of symbolism, music and visual splendour, involving an impressive roll call of African diasporic performers and artists, 'Black is King' is the first in a reported three picture deal between Beyoncé and Disney. We discuss the film's aesthetic qualities and cultural merit, as well as its more problematic dimensions, its simplistic, potentially fetishistic depiction of a vague and all-encompassing "African" culture, its celebration of opulence and capitalist ambitions as a lever of Black empowerment, and the way it highlights a melancholic search for identity, roots and heritage among many African Americans. We mention a number of other films, namely The Burial of Kojo (2018), that you can watch on Netflix, the excellent Black Girl (1966) by Ousmane Sembène, freely available on YouTube! As an aside, here is an article Abla mentions Disney's dodgy credentials when it comes to matters of race and ethnicity—not to mention its history of plagiarism, sexism and dubious business practices.  Comments and feedback welcome @mydylarama and if you like our work donate at mydy.link/support.   Follow us and comment! @mydylarama on Twitter & Facebook

Another fortnight, another episode! We start with our picks and move on to a discussion about American Horror Story: Apocalypse (S8, 2018).   As huge horror fans, we'll have other episodes down the line in this genre....   Coco's Top Pick is American Son (2019), performed as a one set straight play, in which an interracial couple waits at the police station for news of their teenage son's whereabouts, revealing the lies a family has told themselves about political race and the limitations of family and love. Despite the gratification of seeing Nia Long and Omar Epps in a sexy thriller, the best thing to say about Fatal Affair (2020) is that it should be saved for date night when you don't really need to finish the film. Two documentaries worth watching are Cannabis (S1E5, The Business of Drugs, 2020), which provides the history of small businesses pushing for legalising the cannabis industry in California and the encroachment of big businesses, and Holy Hell (2016), chronicling 22 years of the Buddhafield cult with file footage from the their videographer, Will Allen, and capturing the emotional journey of Allen's path to accepting the truth.   Abla's picks are thin on the ground, so thankfully Coco's detailed comments more than make up for that! These are Season 1 of The Sinner on Netflix,  an intriguing suspenseful watch, led by Jessica Biel and Bill Pullman who both pull off nuanced and engaging performances. Abla brings it up because it illustrates a point about some police departments in the US that resorted to pinning crimes on one person to help expedite cases. This was discussed in this thoroughly informative podcast: In The Dark (Season 1). She's also flagging the upcoming Independent Iraqi Film Festival, which will be screened online, showcasing work often made in very difficult conditions. Keep on eye out for updates on their website and their Instagram page.    American Horror Story (2011–present) is a 9 season series that airs on FX. Apocalypse (S8) incorporates the characters and storylines from S1, the 12-episode Murder House (2011) and S3, the 13-episode Coven (2013–14). Apocalypse can be summarised as Hogwarts meets The Shining (1980) meets Ghost (1990) meets Rosemary's Baby (1968) meets The Exorcist (1973) meets Lost (2004–2010) meets The Stand (1994). Although Coco thinks the film does avoid the magical Negro trope, which is endemic in horror and fantasy genres, the Benetton Dream Team cast Blacks, Asians, and Latinos is not enough to cover up the two-dimensional strong, black, and unnecessarily single women, e.g., Queenie (Gabourey Sidibe) and Voodoo Queen Marie Laveau (Angela Bassett); but the series is good fun overall, telling an old story in an interesting way, so is recommended.   Comments and feedback welcome, tweet us @mydylarama and if you'd like to support our work, you can donate here!   Follow us and comment! @mydylarama on Twitter & Facebook

In this episode, we discuss our picks of the fortnight and focus on true crime documentary The Staircase and the issues that it brings up.    The Dark finale was definitely a highlight, a truly gripping series, with twists and turns as bonkers as those in Lost, with none of the incoherence and sheer wackiness. Palestinian filmmaker Sameer Qumsieh's doc Walled Citizen, in which he explores travelling with the world's lowest ranking passport was screened as part of the Galway FF selection. You will hopefully be able to catch it at the UK Adventure Travel film festival and the  Manhattan Film Festival in August. Korean Film Nights and Birkbeck's season- Trapped! The Cinema of Confinement starts this week. Kaveh Abbasian's A Long Distance podcast is on Soundcloud. Art of Persia is still available on BBC iPlayer.    Made-for-TV movie The Clark Sisters: First Ladies of Gospel (2019) proved to be more than a melodrama. It's about the price one family paid to change the gospel genre forever and the moving concert scenes are the icing on the cake. Other top picks are College Behind Bars (2019), a four-part documentary series profiling the Bard Prison Initiative (BPI) which is a vehicle for inmate rehabilitation, redemption and transformation; and Mucho Mucho Amor: The Legend of Walter Mercado (2020) which raises questions around gender and sexuality in Latin American media representation, but bizarrely not race, providing a cautionary tale of ownership and exploitation in show business.   We'll be focusing on Secorro's recommendation - The Staircase, currently available on Netflix, and discuss issues it brings up around culpability, social and marital expectations, the nature of factual evidence and all sorts of anecdotes. Tip: Watch ALL 13 episodes to understand the full scope of the discussion! Read more at Mydylarama.org.uk   Follow us and comment! @mydylarama on Twitter & Facebook

From Self-Made: Inspired by the Life of Madam C.J. Walker (2020); Strong Island (2017); Skin (2019); I Am Not Your Negro (2016); & Black Privilege (2019), emerges the theme of Black Middle-Class aspiration. While they all hit the mark for entertainment value, some fall short in misrepresenting a fantasy of black life that is more based-on-aspiration than matter-of-fact.  In light of the solidarity expressed by the Black Lives Matter movement - and other protesters and campaigners - with Palestinians, our intro is about Palestinian films that shed light on the current issue of annexation. Abla talks about the London Palestine Film Festival collection, Mads Grorud's The Tower (2018, available via Amazon Prime), Wassim Safadi's State of Siege (2018, available on YouTube) and Mehdi Fleifel's A World Not Ours (2012, also Amazon Prime). She also mention this article by Tareq Baconi that provides a very interesting analysis of Israel's annexation plans.    Follow us and comment! @mydylarama on Twitter & Facebook

The myDylarama team has decided to launch a podcast, on the back of our Screen Extra section, and our wish to offer an academic/contextual/ socio-political take on film and screen-related matters. It will be hosted by Coco Green, armchair critic and wannabe academic (ABD PhD) and Abla Kandalaft, a film programmer and journalist. We both research and work with issues around race, colonialism, class and culture. Our first myDylarama podcast begins with this top five from Coco Green. She lists her Netflix picks of the last 2 weeks that address issues around Black lives and identity - The "King Richard" episode of Trial by Media (2020); Murder to Mercy: The Cyntoia Brown Story (2020); Time: The Kalief Browder Story (2017); American Gospel (2018); Malcolm X (1992). The running thread is the theme of Black aspiration. She'll continue with this theme in the next episode, where she'll talk about another five films.  Episodes will vary in format and length. We're aiming for anything between 20 and 50 mins, and a mix of individual reviews, discussions, interviews and guest spots.  Comments and feedback welcome! If you'd like to support our work, you can donate at mydy.link/support.    Follow us! @mydylarama on Twitter & Facebook