Tag: Film

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Shaking things up: Teen launches a student-run film festival

High schooler Mia Lazar was moved by the events of August 2017 to create the student-run Filmshakers Festival, premiering at Vinegar Hill Theatre on Saturday. Courtesy of subject

By Charles Burns

When Mia Lazar, a 17-year-old student at Blacksburg High School, first heard the news of Heather Heyer’s senseless murder at the hands of a white supremacist in Charlottesville, she was both rattled and ready to stand up for positive social change. Outraged by the rampant bigotry on display on August 12, 2017, she felt an urgent desire to fight hate and intolerance with whatever tools she had at her disposal. For Lazar, filmmaking has become the ideal medium for both developing her own creative voice and promoting tolerance in the face of bigotry.

Last year, after winning a Digital Young Leaders Exchange Program fellowship grant, Lazar created the Filmshakers Festival—it’s student-run and focuses on starting a meaningful dialogue to foster peacebuilding both within the Charlottesville community and nationally. C-VILLE spoke with Lazar about filmmaking and the festival, which takes place on October 5 at the Vinegar Hill Theatre.

C-VILLE: How did you become more involved with the world of filmmaking and start making films yourself?

Mia Lazar: I started making documentaries for a school project when I was in 6th grade. Soon, I found the joy of researching in archives, [and] flipping through documents that nobody had seen in decades. I was really shy, yet documentary filmmaking made me realize that I could have a powerful voice. I began to make films about things that I care about: women’s rights, environmental justice, and equality. I especially love topics that relate to Virginia history.

The first time I attended a film festival, I was in awe. I was surrounded by people who wanted to make a difference, and who cared deeply about the problems presented in their films.

Our generation is looking for ways to express ourselves and advocate for a more just society. That’s why [I created] the Filmshakers Festival—I want more high schoolers to have an opportunity to share their voices about modern-day issues.

How did you come to this project?

Like many others, the events in Charlottesville two years ago made me want to do something. I also felt a big sister’s protectiveness to my own sister [when she was] getting criticized for her statements about our Tempest Tossed film [Lazar’s sister Ava was trolled online for a comment in a Roanoke Times article on the film, in which she said refugees should be welcomed to the United States just as our grandparents were].

Explain the origins of the festival and the steps necessary to make it a reality.

I came up with the name Filmshakers because I wanted to make a festival for high school movers and shakers. I spent the time from October 2018 to spring 2019 finding a venue and creating the website, rules, and budget.

My friend, Ella Goldschmidt, who is an incredible artist, created the painting featured on the website. My sister has been in charge of social media. A few friends volunteered to help hand out fliers in their schools before the festival and hand out programs the day of the festival. I’ve been trying to contact teachers and students to encourage them to participate. One challenge I had during this process was finding the courage to ask adults for mentoring or other help with the project. This pushed me out of my comfort zone, but I think that it will help make the film festival stronger.

What can you tell us about the selected films?

Many…come from the Charlottesville area. Albemarle High School is showing two films, and Light House Studios, a Charlottesville youth film nonprofit, is also showing two films. Isabelle Jordan’s film, A Familiar Refrain: Thomas Jefferson and the Golden Age, is a short historical documentary about Thomas Jefferson and the history of bigotry in the United States. Cross Culture Crush is a narrative film from Albemarle High School about two teenagers who date despite resistance from their parents.

What kind of reaction do you want to elicit from audiences?

I want the audience to come away from the film festival motivated and hopeful—motivated in that they feel like they can help with change and hopeful that change can happen. I’m also hoping that it will be a chance for filmmakers to meet other people who support the causes of anti-bigotry and peacebuilding.

Charles Burns is a senior at Charlottesville High School and editor of the school’s newspaper, the Knight-Time Review.

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ARTS Pick: Pure Formalism

Celluloid hero: In defining its summer film series Pure Formalism, The Bridge PAI states, “In the spirit of Stan Brakhage, we stand face-to-face with the image itself—and absorb.” Brakhage was a highly influential experimental filmmaker whose career spanned five decades beginning in the ’50s. His six-minute short The Dante Quartet, a silent film of images painted directly onto the frames, will be screened along with eight other historic and contemporary works—some of them local.

Wednesday 7/3 Free. 8pm. The Bridge Progressive Arts Initiative, 209 Monticello Rd. 984-5669.

 

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ARTS Pick: BANFF Mountain Film Festival

The BANFF Mountain Film Festival comes to town this weekend. Publicity photo

Get the thrill of an outdoor adventure while staying warm and comfy at the BANFF Mountain Film Festival. Filmed in spectacular locations around the planet, BANFF’s lineup of impossible climbs, extreme bike rides, dramatic free falls, and environmental eye-openers, which range from five to 45 minutes in length, offers viewers a breathtaking journey from their theater seats.

Sunday, March 10 and Monday, March 11. $19-22, times vary. The Paramount Theater, 215 E. Main St., Downtown Mall. 979-1333.

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Found family: Shoplifters turns tradition upside down

Shoplifters is a masterful portrayal of a struggling Japanese household that unites through circumstances rather than blood. Image courtesy Magnolia Pictures

In Shoplifters, director Hirokazu Kore-eda explores the beauty and morality that forms within societal fractures. The characters live as any family ought: They are supportive, caring, loving, and do what they must to help each other survive. They uphold the epitome of family values, except they are criminals and none of them are related. Every member is better off in this household than in their previous situation, whether they left by choice or by necessity. The freedom that they find with each other creates a stronger bond than with their own blood relations.

The group survives through a series of petty cons—best left unspoiled—and shoplifting, a routine developed between “father” Osamu (Lily Franky) and “son” Shota (Jyo Kairi). One cold day, on the way home from a good haul, they find a young girl, Yuri (Miyu Sasaki), shivering and hungry, forgotten on her family’s porch. They take her in for a warm meal and a place to sleep, and she quickly finds a home with the group, under the care of “mother” Nobuyo (Sakura Ando). Whatever their reason for being there, everyone in this “family” settles in to their roles: caring grandmother Hatsue (Kirin Kiki), young woman asserting her independence Aki (Mayu Matsuoka), adolescent boy in search of a role model Shota, and parents Osamu and Nobuyo. Even though no one is who they seem on first impression, it’s more stability than the young girl has known with her own family.

Despite the positive outlook and lack of judgment in Kore-eda’s direction, this is not a sanitized view of poverty, or entertainment at the expense of the underprivileged. As you learn more about the characters, you wonder about their stories. Did they escape their situation willingly, or are they on the run? They can never be too public with their arrangement for fear of legal repercussions. And the philosophy of shoplifting that Osamu passes on to Shota begins to lose its charm as he learns more about ownership and responsibility.

This is the magic of Shoplifters, when chosen identity becomes more real than the one we were given, and when a group of unrelated strangers who live off the grid provides more stability than the traditional family. Aki’s sex work is presented without judgment; she is not tragic, she doesn’t need saving, and neither she nor her clients are shamed. The “grandmother” is treated with more dignity than if she’d been given a pension and shoved aside. The film asserts the humanity of those we might label too quickly as pariahs.

You may have seen movies with themes similar to Shoplifters, but you have not seen a movie quite like it. Anchored by masterful directing, and invigorated by terrific performances, Shoplifters is sweet, funny, insightful, intelligent, and a joy to watch. It is not to be missed.

Shoplifters

R, 121 minutes, Violet Crown Cinema

See it again: The Wizard of Oz

PG, 110 minutes; Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX, January 27

Local theater listings

Alamo Drafthouse Cinema 377 Merchant Walk Sq., 326-5056. 

Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX The Shops at Stonefield, 244-3213.

Violet Crown Cinema 200 W. Main St., Downtown Mall, 529-3000.

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Failed translation: The Upside is slow to show its charm

Kevin Hart and Bryan Cranston star in The Upside, a confusing comedy that doesn’t hold up to the original French version. Photo courtesy STXFILMS

If you’ve ever listened to somebody tell a joke when they’ve clearly lost track of the punchline, you know the experience of watching The Upside. Full of good intentions and boundless charisma between the performers, every moment of real tension in the film is diffused before getting to the good stuff in this remake based on a documentary about a true (French) story. The film redirects genuine emotion into dime-a-dozen plot contrivances, where universal truths and human warmth get jumbled in a game of cinematic telephone.

The story follows the relationship between a wealthy widower, Phillip (Bryan Cranston), who requires assistance following an accident that leaves him paralyzed from the neck down, and his caregiver Dell (Kevin Hart), an unqualified ex-con who thought he was interviewing for a different job.

For Phillip, the mere fact that Dell is able to make him laugh is enough to put him ahead of everyone else with the proper training, and his willingness to make light of Phillip’s condition is a breath of fresh air. Over time, Dell sees his job as more than a way to keep his parole officer happy. It is a path to a better life. Meanwhile, Phillip finds joy and companionship he has not felt since the death of his wife.

It’s a fine premise for a movie, one which propelled its source material, 2011’s The Intouchables, to international success not often seen for a French- language film. But The Upside falls short due to its inability to carry the inherent strength of this story anywhere worth going. It’s too sappy to be an effective drama, the gags are too infrequent to be a solid comedy, and it’s too meandering to be a coherent recitation of narrative beats.

There are moments that are elevated by the performances, when Phillip and Dell begin joking, we believe that these two men truly enjoy making each other laugh. It’s pure chemistry when they are allowed to simply exist as characters instead of being funneled into scenarios straight out of a Hallmark movie. One scene involving the question of whether Phillip will be able to date a woman who does not see his condition as a burden is remarkable, allowing thoughts and feelings to unfold naturally through glances, clever editing, and fine acting. Moments later, the movie condenses all of that earned good will into a groan-worthy excuse to introduce unmotivated conflict between Dell and Phillip. As Yvonne, Nicole Kidman is great with what little she’s given, but her underutilization is perplexing.

The Upside continues the frustrating trend of Cranston and Hart, two dedicated performers with remarkable work ethics, committing to projects that do not do justice to their talent. Of course, it comes to us the first week of the new year, long considered a graveyard for films produced in pursuit of awards that don’t quite measure up. Everyone involved here is capable of better, making it the first misfire of 2019.

The Upside

PG-13, 126 minutes

Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX, Violet Crown Cinema

See it again

Breakfast at Tiffany’s, PG, 115 minutes

The Paramount Theater, January 18

Local theater listings

Alamo Drafthouse Cinema 377 Merchant Walk Sq., 326-5056. 

Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX The Shops at Stonefield, 244-3213.

Violet Crown Cinema 200 W. Main St., Downtown Mall, 529-3000.

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Arts

Blown cover: Disaster is in the details for Mortal Engines

Mortal Engines, starring Hera Hilmar, plays on themes of current global crises to an unsatisfying end. Image courtesy UNIVERSAL PICTURES

If you’re not going to get a good movie for your money, you may as well get a lot of one. So it goes with Mortal Engines, a YA fantasy novel adaptation that seems to have learned from the overlong Divergent series by packing the entire Mortal Engines trilogy into one movie. Or, perhaps producer Peter Jackson (not director, as you may have been led to believe by the marketing) learned that lesson from the world’s Hobbit fatigue, and insisted it all come for the price of one ticket. All three are entirely too much, but at least when the movies are split up, the viewer has the option to bail, while Mortal Engines keeps you captive for an interminable journey where you already know the destination, like an Uber ride with a too-chatty driver.

The setting is a distant future in which the society we know has been eradicated by a horrible weapon released the world over. (Shown, of course, as a series of blasts on the Universal logo. Are they greenlighting movies specifically so they can incorporate it into the prologue?) Over a thousand years later, the cities we know are no more, replaced by mobile municipalities that still have names like London and Bavaria for some reason. London specifically is what’s known as a predator city, roaming the earth and consuming smaller, weaker cities for resources, and absorbing their populations. Why yes, that is a metaphor for colonialism, congratulations on remaining awake.

The narrative follows scavenger Hester Shaw (Hera Hilmar) and sheltered museum employee Tom Natsworthy (Robert Sheehan) as they struggle to expose the evil of London leader Thaddeus Valentine (Hugo Weaving). Thaddeus, a former anthropologist appointed by a stuffy aristocracy that he seeks to overthrow, has to use those ancient, world-destroying weapons against the resistance that has taken refuge in Asia behind, you guessed it, a wall. So now we have refusing to learn the lessons of the past, the end of the class system in England, and globalization.

All of these are fine topics, and Mortal Engines has its heart on the right side of the subjects. But if this movie shows anything, it’s that an apt metaphor is not always a worthwhile one. There’s not much insight into how or why colonial powers operated or the mentality behind a person who supports the endeavor. It is quite satisfying to see a resistance made up of nationalities that suffered colonial brutality, but that joy is drained when the characters become hollow foils for the two white kids in love.

All of this is to say nothing of the slog of a second act concerning an undead robot named Shrike (Stephen Lang under lots of CG) who is obsessed with finding and killing Hester for reasons totally unrelated to the main plot. It introduces an entirely new mythology and then acts like it never happened when it’s time for the big battle. It may have worked as a standalone story about the nature of a soul, anchored by a solid performance from Lang, but as a glorified subplot it’s peculiar and out of place.

Director Christian Rivers has made a pretty movie, but it is exhausting—and not just from all the burnt fuel.

Mortal Engines

PG-13, 129 minutes, Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX, Violet Crown Cinema

See it again

Scrooged

PG-13, 101 minutes. Violet Crown Cinema, December 20

Local theater listings

Alamo Drafthouse Cinema 377 Merchant Walk Sq., 326-5056

Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX The Shops at Stonefield, 244-3213

Violet Crown Cinema 200 W. Main St., Downtown Mall, 529-3000 

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Arts

Getting van Gogh: Willem Dafoe and Julian Schnabel create a masterpiece

At Eternity’s Gate stars Willem Dafoe as Vincent van Gogh during the final years of the artist’s life. Photo credit: Lily Gavin

By its very nature, portraying the life of an artist of any medium on film while incorporating the substance of his work into the overall aesthetic is a risky endeavor. Perhaps it’s no coincidence, then, that visual artist and director Julian Schnabel has helmed two of the most resonant films about the lives and work of famous painters: 1996’s Basquiat, and one of this year’s most fascinating movies, At Eternity’s Gate. The latter is based on the life and work of Vincent van Gogh, and it is neither full biography nor pure reinterpretation of his paintings.

Instead, Schnabel examines the artist’s place in the world around him, his perspective, his technical and emotional attachment to the process, and the physicality of the act of painting. The film does so with a fascinating, hyper-realistic style that contextualizes van Gogh while removing the meaning of time, place, and even language in shaping him and his legacy.

The film follows the last two years of the artist’s life, which were famously his most productive. Finding the bustle of Paris overwhelming, he leaves for the countryside of Arles, to share his vision of nature with the world. Even there, he finds the small-mindedness of the people around him stifling, and, compounded by his deteriorating mental health, he falls into psychotic episodes that he rarely remembers.

When you look at a painting, you are never asked to imagine that it is real. You are expected to be aware of its construction, the intention of its brushstrokes, the framing, and the use of color. Schnabel does the same with At Eternity’s Gate. Willem Dafoe is exceptional in the lead role, and the fact that he is nearly 30 years older than van Gogh was at his death emphasizes the artist’s estrangement from his contemporaries, such as Paul Gauguin (Oscar Isaac). The bold decision to have him speak English to people speaking French alienates him even further. The film is not strictly from van Gogh’s point of view, but the two are connected, almost as much as van Gogh is to his own paintings.

The film is far from immersive, to its credit; the shaky camera reminds us that the simple act of remembering him makes us participants in his story, and when the perspective shifts to van Gogh’s, we see the world the way he did: the color, vibrancy, and texture of nature contrasting with dark, directionless, featureless cities and towns. When half of the screen goes blurry—references to possible failing vision—it is somehow more beautiful, bringing out colors and shapes we did not see before, reminding us that observation requires active engagement in the subject.

Whenever films about the same thing are released at about the same time, it’s inevitable to compare them. It’s possible to have two worthwhile stories on the same subject, but this is not the case with the two van Gogh movies: At Eternity’s Gate and last year’s Loving Vincent. The latter made waves for being fully animated in van Gogh’s style using only paint. It was a pretty exercise, but a hollow one; the movie was a series of interrogations by Armand Roulin (Douglas Booth) with rotoscoped actors reciting facts you could find on van Gogh’s Wikipedia page. The meaning of the effect was lost, cheapening the hard work that went into it by not making it an essential part of the story or enhancing the audience’s understanding. Loving Vincent was pretty, but At Eternity’s Gate is beautiful, and one of the year’s best films.

At Eternity’s Gate

R, 111 minutes, Violet Crown Cinema

See it again

The Bishop’s Wife. NR, 109 minutes. Alamo Drafthouse Cinema, December 8

Opening this week

Check theater websites for complete listings.

Alamo Drafthouse Cinema 377 Merchant Walk Sq., 326-5056  

Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX The Shops at Stonefield, 244-3213  

Buttons, George Takei’s Allegiance on Broadway

Violet Crown Cinema 200 W. Main St., Downtown Mall, 529-3000  

At Eternity’s Gate, Maria by Callas  

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Arts

Classic masters: Peter Bogdanovich puts Orson Welles and Buster Keaton back on the screen

The newly released Orson Welles film The Other Side of the Wind, starring John Huston, Welles, and Peter Bogdanovich, will be shown at the Paramount Theater on Sunday. Bogdanovich’s documentary on silent film star Buster Keaton, The Great Buster, screens at St. Anne’s-Belfield School on Saturday. Due to an injury, Bogdanovich will not appear in person, but he will participate in the scheduled discussions via Skype. Photo courtesy of VAFF

By Justin Humphreys

arts@c-ville.com

Decades ago, actor/writer/director/film historian Peter Bogdanovich promised his friend and colleague Orson Welles that, if Welles couldn’t finish his work-in-progress, The Other Side of the Wind, he would complete it for him. Now, Bogdanovich, at age 79, has beaten countless setbacks and fulfilled that promise.

Academy Award-winning editor Bob Murawski and co-producer Frank Marshall worked with a team to parse 100 hours of Welles’ unedited footage, shot decades ago by a mostly deceased crew. Marshall describes the process as, “a cross between a jigsaw puzzle and a scavenger hunt.” Together, they assembled a cohesive work respectful of its legendary creator’s vision.

The Other Side of the Wind stars John Huston as Jake Hannaford, a vile, macho director, trying to revive his faltering career with a counterculture movie. Bogdanovich co-stars as director Brooks Otterlake, Hannaford’s protégé. The highly anticipated film will be shown on Sunday at the Paramount Theater.

In addition, Bogdanovich’s new documentary The Great Buster, which chronicles comic genius Buster Keaton’s turbulent life and career, will screen on Saturday.

Ironically, Keaton was one of the few classic Hollywood giants Bogdanovich didn’t interview. “I missed him by about two months,” Bogdanovich says. “I was just trying to find him and he died.” Bogdanovich spoke with C-VILLE by phone from France.

C-VILLE: After so many failed attempts at finishing The Other Side of the Wind, how did the film finally coalesce?

Peter Bogdanovich: After [producer] Filip [Rymsza] got the two women, Beatrice Welles [Orson’s daughter] and Oja Kodar [co-author/star], to collaborate on the picture, everything else seemed to fall into place. Netflix stepped up to the plate and they’ve been just incredible, I mean extraordinary—better than any studio I’ve worked for. We went over budget and they didn’t even mention it.

You were heavily involved in the editing?

Oh, sure. [The film’s veterans] all were. We all had input. Bob did a very good job. It was a long process. …Everybody worked on it very hard, very diligently, very dedicated, with a lot of love there.

Many of the film’s participants are now gone. How did it feel being one of the last men standing and watching the finished product?

A little strange. I mean, here I am in my 70s, watching myself in my 30s. That was pretty odd. And I hadn’t seen much of the footage with me in it . . . So it was quite an experience, actually. I haven’t quite dealt with it fully.

What was it like being directed by Orson?

That’s interesting. Orson Welles created an atmosphere on the set—not for the crew, but for the actors—where you absolutely felt like you could do anything. You never felt like you shouldn’t do something, or shouldn’t try something, it was a very free atmosphere where you could do anything you wanted. He laughed a lot and made us laugh. He made it a fun set for the actors. [Meanwhile] the crew worked like dogs, like slaves.

They got along famously, [Huston] and Orson. It was great. You know the climactic scene between Huston and me, where I stick my head in the window? Huston wasn’t there for that scene. I played that scene with Orson. That’s why it’s so emotional. And Orson’s only direction to me in that scene was ‘It’s us.’

I sensed throughout the film that it was so much about you two. It was touching.

I haven’t let myself really go with it emotionally. I just watch it and say ‘It’s brilliant and Orson’s brilliant.’ And it’s the best performance I ever gave in a movie, or anywhere.

How did The Great Buster come about?

I had met Charles Cohen before, the producer, I don’t know where. And he asked me if I would like to do a documentary on Buster Keaton, and I said, ‘Yeah, sure.’ And that was it.

It’s wonderful that Keaton was revered at the end of his life, after several rough decades.

Happily, the Venice Film Festival gave him that tribute, which allowed me, in the plot, to come back to the features at the end, which I thought was the one really good idea I had—to make it a celebration and come back to the features at the end rather than the middle.

What do you think is Keaton’s lasting genius as a filmmaker?

He always knew where to put the camera. He was a brilliant actor of comedy—extraordinary. He knew instinctively what to do.

What’s next for you?

I’m not quite sure. Paramount, out of the blue, asked to option The Killing of the Unicorn, the book I wrote about Dorothy Stratten, and they want to make a 10-hour series out of it. As far as features are concerned, the one I’m planning to do but I don’t know if I’ll do it next, because it’s a bit elaborate, is a comedy-drama-fantasy called Wait For Me, that I’ve been working on for 30 years. I think it’s the best thing I ever wrote.

The newly released Orson Welles film The Other Side of the Wind, starring John Huston, Welles, and Peter Bogdanovich, will be shown at the Paramount Theater on Sunday. Bogdanovich’s documentary on silent film star Buster Keaton, The Great Buster, screens at St. Anne’s-Belfield School on Saturday. Due to an injury, Bogdanovich will not appear in person, but he will participate in the scheduled discussions via Skype.

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Arts

Maupintown Film Festival shines through the eyes of others

Lorenzo Dickerson’s Maupintown Film Festival opens at the Jefferson School African American Heritage Center on Friday. Photo by Eze Amos

When Lorenzo Dickerson was in fifth grade at Murray Elementary school, he had to write a book report.

He went down to the school library and came across Extraordinary Black Americans, a book full of dozens of profiles on inventors, politicians, activists, artists, writers and more.

It was a sizable read for the fifth-grader, who read the book, wrote the report and kept checking the book out of the library until Dickerson’s father took note and purchased a copy that his son could call his own.

Extraordinary Black Americans is “what really got me hooked on African American stories, aside from the elders in my family constantly telling me stories,” says Dickerson, now an independent filmmaker who focuses his lens on the African American experience in Charlottesville and Albemarle County, and runs the annual Maupintown Film Festival that takes place this week, from July 13 to 15 at the Jefferson School African American Heritage Center.

Dickerson is drawn to film for its ability to hold attention unlike any other storytelling medium. “Being able to hear the stories directly from people who have those experiences, and being able to see their faces as they tell the stories,” is unbeatable, he says.

He learned this in his first documentary film, The Coachman, about one of his ancestors, Warren Dickerson, a descendant of slaves who lived, loved and worked in Albemarle County through the Great Depression, the Great Migration, World War I and World War II. It was a way for Dickerson to capture his research into a single narrative story for his family members.

From that point on, when he saw a movie that moved him and made him think, he wanted to share it with others. “How am I going to get other people to see this?” he thought. He decided to have a film festival.

The first Maupintown Film Festival took place in 2015, at St. John Baptist Church in Cobham, Virginia, on land that Dickerson’s family has lived on for generations—some of them were enslaved on a plantation (now the Castle Hill estate) just across the street.

The theme for the 28 films that will be shown at this year’s festival is “aware of the evidence.” Dickerson says the intention is “to highlight stories that we don’t typically hear. In schools, we’re going to get Harriet Tubman, we’re going to get Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks. And then it kind of drops off from there.” They’re important figures, but it’s the same type of story every time. “And a lot of times, you only get that in February,” during black history month, so “that’s part of the reason why the film festival is in July, so we can get this [history] some other time of the year.”

A variety of perspectives are presented at the Maupintown Film Festival, from an animated cartoon about Harriet Tubman to local director Paul Wagner’s 1982 documentary Miles of Smiles, Years of Struggle, about a group of Pullman car porters who in the 1920s organized the first African American-led labor organization to receive a charter in the American Federation of Labor.

It’s about “bringing awareness to these stories that we don’t often hear and allowing people to understand the experience of [people] of African descent from various parts of the world,” says Dickerson.

There are hyper-local stories in films like Phil Audibert and Ross Hunter’s Someday: The Unexpected Story of School Integration in Orange County, Virginia. Frederick DeShon Murphy’s The American South As We Know It considers African American history in a national sense, examining how African American history began in the South and moved to different parts of the country.

Murphy interviewed community civil rights activists, Negro league baseball players, historians and regular people for his film that he says is ultimately about “the resiliencies of African Americans living in the South, from enslaved people to sharecroppers and people living through and after Jim Crow.”

“A lot of people perished along the way,” says Murphy. They died on slave ships and on plantations, at the hands of the Ku Klux Klan, their employers and their neighbors. “It could have been easy to give up during Jim Crow…if you’re here today, you spawn from a resilient bloodline. That’s what I push people to understand with this film,” says Murphy. “African American history is American history.”

Ebony Bailey’s 15-minute documentary, Life Between Borders: Black Migrants in Mexico, offers an international perspective. The film focuses mostly on Haitians currently living in Tijuana, Mexico, who are trying to get to the United States. Many of them left Haiti after a 2010 earthquake devastated the island, and went to Brazil in search of work, but when the economic crisis hit that country, they migrated to Mexico. Now, with U.S. immigration laws tightening and changing, they’re settling in Tijuana, having families and opening businesses.

Showing these rich stories at the Maupintown Film Festival emphasizes that local, personal stories can (and do) carry the same weight as national ones. And Dickerson never forgets the impetus for it all—he still has that copy of Extraordinary Black Americans, and he frequently reads it to his children, ages 3 and 6, so that they, too, might get hooked and have a broader understanding of American history, themselves and the world.

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Spider-Man: Homecoming weaves a brand new thrill

Spider-Man: Homecoming delights faithful fans and brings new ones along in Marvel Cinematic Universe’s instant classic update. Photo courtesy Columbia Pictures

At first, the biggest surprise move made by Marvel was placing fan favorite (yet far-fetched) Thor on equal footing with the iconic Iron Man and Captain America in its Cinematic Universe. Now we accept the character’s presence as a given. Then the studio defied expectations by establishing phase two of its master plan with new-to-film properties such as Ant-Man, Doctor Strange and Guardians of the Galaxy, all of them smash hits at the box office and received well enough by critics. Then many began wondering when Marvel’s impossible winning streak would end (Iron Fist notwithstanding).

With Spider-Man: Homecoming, the MCU has pulled off its biggest surprise yet by not only bringing back one of its previously untouchable properties (Sony owns the film rights to the character), but delivering the best Spidey movie in more than a decade and bringing life to a story that risked exhausting its fanbase with excessive reboots. Homecoming is not only entertaining, funny and well-performed in its own right, but it will instantly win back the affections of fatigued fans with its exciting action, wry wit and genuine desire to do this story justice.

Spider-Man: Homecoming follows Peter Parker’s (Tom Holland) ordeals following his introduction in Captain America: Civil War. Initially recruited under Tony Stark’s tutelage, Parker spends his free time reporting to Stark about his daily activities; sometimes eventful, sometimes not. Mostly, he hops around New York City in a mechanized suit designed by Stark, attempting to do good by its residents and pining for the day he will be called to swing into battle. He refuses most social engagements or extracurricular activities, citing his mysterious internship. He does, after all, still need to navigate high school, and all the awkward crushes, social hierarchies and inherent tension of wanting to grow up as quickly as possible, no matter the cost.

Meanwhile, a contractor named Adrian Toomes (Michael Keaton), tasked with cleaning up the rubble left by the massive battle of 2012’s The Avengers, is irked by the newly formed U.S. Department of Damage Control pushing him out of the job before he or his employees have been fully paid. Before leaving the crash site, he accidentally makes off with alien technology that he learns to harness into powerful weaponry, leading him into a new life as an arms dealer with merchandise found nowhere else.

Both the hero and villain of Homecoming exist as a direct result of events in previous MCU movies, a first for a series that has so far relied on either preexisting yet concealed mythology or an individual rising to the task of history. As a result, Homecoming is as much about the characters’ roles in the world, not just their own individual arcs. Toomes has a working-class, stick-it-to-the-man vendetta. Parker, though recognized as the most brilliant mind in his class, tries not to disappoint those who believe in him, whether that person be Stark (Robert Downey Jr.), his aunt May (Marisa Tomei), his best friend, Ned (Jacob Balaton), or his all-time crush, Liz (Laura Harrier).

Holland brings a new level of teenage enthusiasm to the character (not to mention being the first actor to be believable in the age group). Keaton is fantastically bitter yet very human, and is not out to destroy the world so much as he is to get what he feels he is owed. The New York they inhabit is realistic, and director Jon Watts has a keen eye toward the diversity of modern-day Queens that feels both intentional and natural.

All of the cast, leading and supporting, is excellent. Each of the action sequences is unique and grows directly out of the events of the film itself. We feel the weight if Parker fails—and sometimes he does, or comes very close—and the shame and disappointment in these moments are perhaps the most dramatically significant of the MCU thus far. Spider-Man: Homecoming is far more than an obligatory restart, and if you are a newcomer to the series, it is a perfect place to start.