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. 

 

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About

Top Picks is hosted by two of film programmers and social researchers behind myDylarama. We use postcolonial, afro-pessimism, and Bourdieusian theories to discuss race and class in drama, documentary, mystery, and horror films. Now in its 10th year, myDy champions independent film using the medium as a platform for underrepresented and oft-ignored voices. myDy is official partner of the Clermont-Ferrand International Film Festival, and collaborates with The Media Fund, ByWire, and Emerging Filmmakers Night.

 

Abla Kandalaft, co-founder of myDylarama, is a trilingual film programmer, researcher, journalist and translator. She is passionate about economics, environmental issues, migration, and politics; and has worked with the BBC, Cannes Film Festival, and BFI. Coco Green is an aspiring academic and armchair critic. When not discussing racism in film, both on Top Picks and in the streets, she is writing about black counterpublics in hopes of completing her PhD.

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!

 

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About

Top Picks is hosted by two of film programmers and social researchers behind myDylarama. We use postcolonial, afro-pessimism, and Bourdieusian theories to discuss race and class in drama, documentary, mystery, and horror films. Now in its 10th year, myDy champions independent film using the medium as a platform for underrepresented and oft-ignored voices. myDy is official partner of the Clermont-Ferrand International Film Festival, and collaborates with The Media Fund, ByWire, and Emerging Filmmakers Night.

 

Abla Kandalaft, co-founder of myDylarama, is a trilingual film programmer, researcher, journalist and translator. She is passionate about economics, environmental issues, migration, and politics; and has worked with BBC, Cannes Film Festival, and BFI. Coco Green is an aspiring academic and armchair critic. When not discussing racism in film, both on Top Picks and in the streets, she is writing about black counterpublics in hopes of completing her PhD.

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.

 

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About

Top Picks is hosted by two of film programmers and social researchers behind myDylarama film reviews. We use postcolonial, afro-pessimism, and Bourdieusian theories to discuss race and class in drama, documentary, mystery, and horror films. Now in its 10th year, myDy champions independent film and in using the medium as a platform for underrepresented and oft-ignored voices. myDy is official partner of the Clermont-Ferrand International Film Festival, and collaborates with The Media Fund, ByWire, and Emerging Filmmakers Night.

 

Abla Kandalaft, co-founder of myDylarama, is a trilingual film programmer, researcher, journalist and translator. She is passionate about economics, environmental issues, migration, and politics; and has worked with BBC, Cannes Film Festival, and BFI. Coco Green is an aspiring academic and armchair critic. When not discussing racism in film, both on Top Picks and in the streets, she is writing about black counterpublics in hopes of completing her PhD.

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. 

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About

Top Picks is hosted by two of the academics, film programmers and social researchers behind myDylarama film reviews. We use postcolonial, afro-pessimism, and Bourdieusian theories to discuss race and class in drama, documentary, mystery, and horror films. Now in its 10th year, myDy champions independent film and in using the medium as a platform for underrepresented and oft-ignored voices. myDy is official partner of the Clermont-Ferrand International Film Festival, and collaborates with The Media Fund, ByWire, and Emerging Filmmakers Night.

 

Abla Kandalaft, co-founder of myDylarama, is a trilingual film programmer, researcher, journalist and translator. She is passionate about economics, environmental issues, migration, and politics; and has worked with BBC, Cannes Film Festival, and BFI. Coco Green is an aspiring academic and armchair critic. When not discussing racism in film, both on Top Picks and in the streets, she is writing about black counterpublics in hopes of completing her PhD.

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. 

 

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About

Top Picks is hosted by two of the academics, film programmers and social researchers behind myDylarama film reviews. We use postcolonial, afro-pessimism, and Bourdieusian theories to discuss race and class in drama, documentary, mystery, and horror films. Now in its 10th year, myDy champions independent film and in using the medium as a platform for underrepresented and oft-ignored voices. myDy is official partner of the Clermont-Ferrand International Film Festival, and collaborates with The Media Fund, ByWire, and Emerging Filmmakers Night.

 

Abla Kandalaft, co-founder of myDylarama, is a trilingual film programmer, researcher, journalist and translator. She is passionate about economics, environmental issues, migration, and politics; and has worked with BBC, Cannes Film Festival, and BFI. Coco Green is an aspiring academic and armchair critic. When not discussing racism in film, both on Top Picks and in the streets, she is writing about black counterpublics in hopes of completing her PhD.

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.

 

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About

Top Picks is hosted by two of the academics, film programmers and social researchers behind myDylarama film reviews. We use postcolonial, afro-pessimism, and Bourdieusian theories to discuss race and class in drama, documentary, mystery, and horror films. Now in its 10th year, myDy champions independent film and in using the medium as a platform for underrepresented and oft-ignored voices. myDy is official partner of the Clermont-Ferrand International Film Festival, and collaborates with The Media Fund, ByWire, and Emerging Filmmakers Night.

 

Abla Kandalaft, co-founder of myDylarama, is a trilingual film programmer, researcher, journalist and translator. She is passionate about economics, environmental issues, migration, and politics; and has worked with BBC, Cannes Film Festival, and BFI. Coco Green is an aspiring academic and armchair critic. When not discussing racism in film, both on Top Picks and in the streets, she is writing about black counterpublics in hopes of completing her PhD.

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!

 

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About

Top Picks is hosted by two of the academics, film programmers and social researchers behind myDylarama film reviews. We use postcolonial, afro-pessimism, and Bourdieusian theories to discuss race and class in drama, documentary, mystery, and horror films. Now in its 10th year, myDy champions independent film and in using the medium as a platform for underrepresented and oft-ignored voices. myDy is official partner of the Clermont-Ferrand International Film Festival, and collaborates with The Media Fund, ByWire, and Emerging Filmmakers Night.

 

Abla Kandalaft, co-founder of myDylarama, is a trilingual film programmer, researcher, journalist and translator. She is passionate about economics, environmental issues, migration, and politics; and has worked with BBC, Cannes Film Festival, and BFI. Coco Green is an aspiring academic and armchair critic. When not discussing racism in film, both on Top Picks and in the streets, she is writing about black counterpublics in hopes of completi

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

 

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About

Top Picks is hosted by two of the academics, film programmers and social researchers behind myDylarama film reviews. We use postcolonial, afro-pessimism, and Bourdieusian theories to discuss race and class in drama, documentary, mystery, and horror films. Now in its 10th year, myDy champions independent film and in using the medium as a platform for underrepresented and oft-ignored voices. myDy is official partner of the Clermont-Ferrand International Film Festival, and collaborates with The Media Fund, ByWire, and Emerging Filmmakers Night.

 

Abla Kandalaft, co-founder of myDylarama, is a trilingual film programmer, researcher, journalist and translator. She is passionate about economics, environmental issues, migration, and politics; and has worked with BBC, Cannes Film Festival, and BFI. Coco Green is an aspiring academic and armchair critic. When not discussing racism in film, both on Top Picks and in the streets, she is writing about black counterpublics in hopes of completing her PhD.

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. 

 

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About

Top Picks is hosted by two of the academics, film programmers and social researchers behind myDylarama film reviews. We use postcolonial, afro-pessimism, and Bourdieusian theories to discuss race and class in drama, documentary, mystery, and horror films. Now in its 10th year, myDy champions independent film and in using the medium as a platform for underrepresented and oft-ignored voices. myDy is official partner of the Clermont-Ferrand International Film Festival, and collaborates with The Media Fund, ByWire, and Emerging Filmmakers Night.

 

Abla Kandalaft, co-founder of myDylarama, is a trilingual film programmer, researcher, journalist and translator. She is passionate about economics, environmental issues, migration, and politics; and has worked with BBC, Cannes Film Festival, and BFI. Coco Green is an aspiring academic and armchair critic. When not discussing racism in film, both on Top Picks and in the streets, she is writing about black counterpublics in hopes of completing her PhD.

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. 

 

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About

Top Picks is hosted by two of the academics, film programmers and social researchers behind myDylarama film reviews. We use postcolonial, afro-pessimism, and Bourdieusian theories to discuss race and class in drama, documentary, mystery, and horror films. Now in its 10th year, myDy champions independent film and in using the medium as a platform for underrepresented and oft-ignored voices. myDy is official partner of the Clermont-Ferrand International Film Festival, and collaborates with The Media Fund, ByWire, and Emerging Filmmakers Night.

 

Abla Kandalaft, co-founder of myDylarama, is a trilingual film programmer, researcher, journalist and translator. She is passionate about economics, environmental issues, migration, and politics; and has worked with BBC, Cannes Film Festival, and BFI. Coco Green is an aspiring academic and armchair critic. When not discussing racism in film, both on Top Picks and in the streets, she is writing about black counterpublics in hopes of completing her PhD.