Episodes
Aurelia Belfield
Episode 47: Magic Mike 2: Sisterhood of the ...
Episode 47: Magic Mike 2: Sisterhood of the Traveling Thongs
Essays
Aurelia Belfield
My Depression is Like.

My depression and anxiety has manifested itself in a number of self-hating and harmful ways and it becomes easy to convince myself that my appearance is what’s wrong. I recognize that at the root it is often about me not being enough and a desire to somehow become someone other than who I am. It’s easier to believe that my thighs or my skin or my stomach or my hair is what’s causing me so much grief than to confront the fact that something real is wrong and that something is beyond my control.

My Depression is Like.
Interviews
Aurelia Belfield
Filling the gaps with "Strolling": an interview ...

In an interview for Film Comment, French director Axelle Ropert said that as a director she made films that she felt were missing as a spectator- that she was filling gaps. Though Ropert wasn't talking about racial representation (or the lack thereof), it is the same impulse that prompted UK-based visual artist Cecile Emeke to create Strolling, a series of short documentaries in which the director herself goes on a walk with beautiful black Londoners to talk about various issues ranging from free tampons to European colonization. She took some of her time to answer our questions about this brilliant series and her upcoming short "Ackee & Saltfish." — interviewed by Fanta

Filling the gaps with "Strolling": an interview with Cecile Emeke

Reviews

The 'Grim Sleeper' and Expendable Black Women

The 'Grim Sleeper' and Expendable Black Women

“The police don’t care because these are Black women.” 

Thirty minutes into documentary filmmaker Nick Broomfield’s latest film, Tales of the Grim Sleeper,we hear these words uttered by Pam, one of the film’s most compelling figures, as she and Bloomfield are driving down the streets of South Central Los Angeles. The documentary follows the case of a South Central serial killer dubbed the Grim Sleeper by the media due to the belief that the killer waited 14 years between murders. Pam is a former sex worker who had multiple dealings with Lonnie Franklin Jr, the man arrested and charged with 10 counts of murder, and one charge of attempted murder. Franklin is believed to be the Grim Sleeper and responsible for the murders of over 100 women and girls (victims’ ages ranged between 14 and 36) in South Central between 1985 and 2010. In the scene preceding Pam’s comment, Broomfield is conversing with Margaret Prescod, founder of the Black Coalition Fighting Back Serial Murders and Laverne Peters, the mother of one of the victims, Janecia Peters. The Coalition has been advocating for justice on behalf of the victims since the 1980s. Earlier in the film when we’re first introduced to her, we see footage showing a younger Prescod handing out leaflets outside of a grocery store as she talks to patrons about the murders of young women that, at the time, have been happening for three years

Carefree Black Girls, Interrupted

Carefree Black Girls, Interrupted

In April, a beautiful teaser of the movie Girlhood was released showing, in one long track, the promise of the great carefree black girl film that could have been. It first lingered on the face of what we presumed was the main character, Marieme (played by Karidja Touré) and then unveiled a line of girls who we cannot hear but who we see lively interacting with each other, Para One's electro soundtrack in the background. The colorful teaser did its job: it made me curious about a film I was skeptical about after having read its synopsis almost a year ago. Then there was the Cannes Festival where the film was shown to critical acclaim. There were murmurs about an unconventional all black, feminist film and a lot of noise about a certain scene involving four black girls dancing and singing to Rihanna’s Diamonds.