A little recap of my weekend at the 38th Annual Virginia Film Festival where I saw films like Hamnet, The Secret Agent, Sentimental Value, and more.

It’s September, which means it’s time for the Toronto International Film Festival! In this episode, I share my experience on the ground at TIFF — from the atmosphere of the festival to some of the highlights of the trip so far. I also dive into a few standout films I’ve seen, including Kahlil Joseph’s BLKNWS: Terms & Conditions, which I had the chance to discuss with him (25:20). We talked about the process of working as both filmmaker and archivist, the power and responsibility of images in relation to Black history, the tension between journalism and representation, and how BLKNWS reimagines media itself as a subject.

Mid-year dispatch time! In this episode I talk about my five favorite movies of 2025... at least so far.

In this episode, I sit down with my friends from the Hard Light Cinema crew, Lewis Peterson and Kyle Mayo-Blake, to talk about two landmark works of the L.A. Rebellion: Charles Burnett’s Killer of Sheep and Zeinabu Irene Davis’ Compensation. We dig into the visceral and poetic realism of Burnett’s vision, the radical tenderness of Davis’ storytelling, and how the L.A. Rebellion reimagines Black life beyond spectacle and stereotype.

This conversation is in celebration of our upcoming co-presented double feature on July 20th at Studio Two Three, where both films will screen back-to-back.

Grab your tickets now at hardlight.online, and if you aren't already, go and give them a follow at @hardlightrichmond on Instagram.

In this episode, we're talking about June's series of films, In Bloom, a series of films from around the world that I want us to use to reframe and explore the complexities of the coming-of-age experience. The series explores the transformative power of these periods in our lives to uncover narrative, visual, and sonic connections that run through each of them.

We're often told that coming of age is linear, a private journey of heartbreak, embarrassment, and eventual clarity. But what if it isn't? What if growing up feels like dislocation, like trying to arrive in a place that isn't ready for you?

These five films—The Spirit of the Beehive, Peppermint Soda, Alma's Rainbow, Moving, and Return to Seoul— grapple with those questions. They offer comfort, sure, but also ask harder things: about identity, alienation, and what it means to grow up when the systems around us fail.

To help us parse through these complex ideas and questions, I had a conversation with Rohan Kalyan, political ethnographer, filmmaker, and Associate Professor and Acting Director of the School of World Studies at Virginia Commonwealth University

In this episode, we sink our teeth into the haunting, cryptic, and ever-engaging lineage of the Black vampire in cinema. From Ganja & Hess to Blade, from Def By Temptation to Suicide by Sunlight, we explore how Black filmmakers and actors have reimagined, reframed, and reconfigured the vampire—not just as monster or metaphor, but as a site of inheritance, reckoning, resistance, and transformation.

We trace the genre’s southern roots, its entanglements with Christianity, and its ties to trauma, sex, and survival. And we ask: what happens when those once rendered monstrous reclaim the myth? When the image, long used to contain or consume, becomes a vessel of self-possession? When the vampire refuses erasure and begins not just to haunt the frame, but to author it?

In this episode, I'm joined by my friend Abby Giuseppe to discuss our new collaborative series, Teknoerotica.

In an era where technology touches every aspect of human life, the intersection of sex, identity, and automation raises pressing questions: How does technology reshape desire? What happens when the boundary between human and machine blurs? Can intimacy persist in a world mediated by artificial intelligence, surveillance, and cybernetics?

Teknoerotica is a five-film series that explores these questions through the lens of speculative fiction, cyber-surrealism, and techno-eroticism. Featuring Crimes of the Future (2022), Strange Days (1995), Teknolust (2002), demonlover (2002), and The Beast (2023), this series examines the ways in which technology amplifies, distorts, and commodifies human desire, presenting visions both seductive and disturbing.

Teknoerotica is screening in Richmond throughout April at Ours, with a special showing at Studio Two Three on April 9. The full schedule is as follows:

April 2 – Crimes of the Future (2022, dir. David Cronenberg)

April 9 – Strange Days (1995, dir. Kathryn Bigelow)

April 16 –Teknolust (2002, dir. Lynn Hershman Leeson)

April 23 – Demonlover (2002, dir. Olivier Assayas)

April 30 –The Beast (2023, dir. Bertrand Bonello)

In this episode, we’re diving into the world of Bong Joon-ho ahead of the release of Mickey 17. We’ll explore his incisive class commentary, visual language and iconography, and approach to genre storytelling—plus, what exactly makes his films stand out in an era where auteur-driven mainstream filmmaking has struggled to thrive. We’ll also dive into his early career in the 2000s Korean film scene, his relationships with actors and other directors, and how he went from cult favorite to global phenomenon.

If any of the films mentioned in this episode pique your interest, here’s where you can stream them:

Barking Dogs Never Bite (2000) - Prime Video, Roku, and Tubi

Memories of Murder (2003) - Tubi

The Host (2006) - Hoopla, Kanopy

Mother (2009) - Hoopla

Snowpiercer (2013) - Roku, Tubi

Okja (2017) - Netflix

Parasite (2019) - Hulu, Netflix

Welcome back! In this episode, we're diving deep into the L.A. Rebellion—a groundbreaking movement that redefined Black independent cinema. This episode comes ahead of Foundations: The L.A. Rebellion and the Birth of a New Black Cinema, our Black History Month screening series at Ours in Richmond, Virginia, running throughout February. We’ll explore the origins of the movement, the visionary filmmakers who shaped it, the films that emerged from it, and why its legacy remains essential to both cinematic and Black history.

2024 has come to a close, and that means it's time to look back at the best films from this past year. We start with a quick recap of this past weekend's Golden Globes (1:16), followed by a discussion about the best cinema from the last 12 months (7:30).