Within Our Gates

Is it Black Cinema or Black Hollywood? To me this is an essential question and for this reason I had to bring on Filmmaker Chad Murdock to talk about with me. We dig into a piece that Chad written called The False Notions of a Blackened Image where he does a material analysis on images that are routinely dispersed currently throughout popular Black movies. We also speak about his recently released film, Phantom of a Killing, and dig into the origins of Chad's development as an artist, his politicization and how thats informed his mode of production. We go a lot of angles, dig into a lotta artists from Ousmane Sembene to Yukio Mishima. Its rich and robust and frankly will be the first of many! Chad also has a special on-line screening of his work on Write Brain TV this Thursday July 24th at 6pm EST Check it out! For more on Chad's work check his website.

To get a jump on the shows a few days early, bonus video episodes every month, deeper dives into text and works with revolutionary content and political art study groups check out Mtume's Patreon and become a subscriber!

Currently we are hosting a asynchronous study group talking about Ariel Dorfman & Armand Mattelart's classic text How to Read Donald Duck. We will going for the rest of the month so join up now!

Also check out my new colaboration The Imperial 80's co-hosted series beginning with Jared Ware of Millenials are Killing Capitalism.

We will be posting the audio recordings of the episode here but make sure to follow the channel if you want to catch the livestreams

This week I'm joined by Julia Alekseyeva to talk their book Antifascism and the Avant- Garde: Radical Documentary in the 1960's published by University of California Press. Julia is an Assistant Professor of English and Cinema & Media Studies at the University of Pennsylvania as well an artist and activist. We have a fantastic conversation about the book which covers the leftist filmmakers of Japan and France who helped revolutionize the documentary form (and cinema overall) and what does this period of radical practice inform us about cinema, and the politics of art both in form and content more broadly. Its a rich conversation that has many angles, I think you will all enjoy! I highly recommend picking up the text and following Julia's work.

To get a jump on the shows a few days early, bonus video episodes every month, deeper dives into text and works with revolutionary content and political art study groups check out Mtume's Patreon and become a subscriber!

Currently we are hosting a asynchronous study group talking about Ariel Dorfman & Armand Mattelart's classic text How to Read Donald Duck. We will going for the rest of the month so join up now!

I also have a special co-hosted series beginning with my friends over at Millenials are Killing Capitalism called The Imperial 80's. We kick off July 15th at 10AM with Sylvester Stallone's First Blood. It will be exciting!

Tumes

Peace Comrades!

For this episode I am joined by two great guests who I plan to have here regularly to discuss Paul Schrader's 1978 film, Blue Collar starring Richard Pryor, Yaphet Kotto and Harvey Keitel. Jared Ball is a professor of communication studies and Africana / Black Studies at Morgan State University in Baltimore, Maryland, United States. Ball is also host of the podcast "iMiXWHATiLiKE!" and a co-founder of Black Liberation Media.

Jared Ware is the co-host of the anti-imperialist podcast Millennials are Killing Capitalism, and also the host their livestreams.

We take a deep dive into Schraders film, with a strong emphasis of the history that lies within the film, and also wrestle with the living history Schrader looks to exclude from the film. Through this process we come to conclusions around the political unconscious that lie in the film and American ideology overall. Its an exciting convo, looking forward to folks thoughts and responses! Note - if my mic is not as robust as usual is because of a recording mistake I made. Its all clear, and I did some good treatment of it in post, but its not to my standard. The two Jared's sound fantastic though, and thats whats important, ha!

To get a jump on the shows a few days early, bonus video episodes every month, deeper dives into text and works with revolutionary content and political art study groups check out Mtume's Patreon and become a subscriber!

Tumes

This week I have my dear friend Marcus Pinn from the longstanding film blog Pinnland Empire with me. Marcus and I have a more freewheeling talk focused around written pieces that come from the both of us, one is Marcus's review of the film Sinners and the other is my critique from a few years ago of the film Get Out. Where they connect is Marcus's (on-point) analysis that Black Hollywood has entered a period of "Get Out-Sploitation" films, and how Sinners, amongst others, fits the mold. This is a necessary convo where we unpack whats been happening, and the pernicious character of this crop of Black Hollywood.

To get a jump on the shows a few days early and also recieve up 1 bonus video episode on per month, deeper dives into text and works with revolutionary content and political art study check out Mtume's Patreon and become a subscriber!

Tumes

This week I'm happy to have Yasmin Nair back with me to talk about Francis Ford Coppola's classic film The Conversation.

The idea came to us after the recent passing of Gene Hackman and both of us speaking about the respect we have for much of the work Hackman did as an actor over the years. It led us to one of his finer films, The Conversation, which is also one of Coppola's very best works. In our investigation about the film, we dig into conversations around the surveillance state, the American obsession with privacy, the character of the American businessman and much more. It's a rich conversation.

Yasmin will also be back in the near future to do some discussion on the work of Stuart Hall which I am really looking forward to!

If you would like to check out more of Yasmin's work (and you should) you can go to her website: https://yasminnair.com/ Looking forward to hearing folks' thoughts on the episode!

To get a jump on the shows a few days early and also recieve up 1 bonus video episode on per month, deeper dives into text and works with revolutionary content and political art study check out Mtume's Patreon and become a subscriber!

Tumes

Very special episode this go' round.

I have with me Paul McIsaac one of the principal actors in the cinema of the late great Robert Kramer. I take a tour with Paul not only about his work with Kramer, but on the radical tendencies of the 60's, how radical artists looked to integrate with the movement, the different tendencies of the "New Left" and the postmortem that followed which created rich works. All of this is done in an effort to understand the social context of which Kramer's films was made, and what we can learn from these truly significant contributions, and we get to learn from one of his most important collaborators.

Its a conversation with a lot of angles, so buckle up.

To get a jump on the shows a few days early and also recieve up 1 bonus episode on video per month, plus other content check out Mtume's Patreon and become a subscriber!

Tumes

Peace Comrades!

For this episode we conclude our Black Noir 92 double bill with Bill Duke's Deep Cover. Joining me again is Adam Thomas, and we dig into Duke's then timely work about the myths of the drug trade. Deep Cover is a fascinating work as it deals with not only with the issues fake war, but also the complications of capitalist ascension for non white folks. It also has one of the more fascinating depictions of Jewishness and how it pertains to whiteness ever depicted through the character of David Jason played by Jeff Goldblum, and we dig into that. We also give that era of Larry Fishburne the props it deserves.

Let us know what you think!

To get a jump on the shows a few days early and also recieve up 1 bonus episode on video per month, plus other content check out Mtume's Patreon and become a subscriber!

Tumes

Peace Comrades!

Super excited for a special episode of Within Our Gates. Joining me is Kei Pritsker and Ben Becker, two of the makers of the very important and timely documentary The Encampments; a film which tells the tale of student uprisings across the country in protest to the ongoing genocide in Gaza. The Encampments is currently playing in theatre's Nationwide and I encourage everyone to see it as it sets the record straight and fights the media propaganda which looked to depict the student encampments as acts of terror and not as acts of principled protests. Kei, Ben and I have a really in depth conversation on the politics of making documentary, how do we approach form and content from a political framework and why its important to document moments of political and revolutionary significance. We also speak about the urgency of getting this documentary out now in order to continue to support individuals like Mahmoud Khalil and others currently being falsely detained in order to suppress the growing support for the Palestinian cause.

Hope all find this convo as fruitful as I do, and go see The Encampments!

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Peace folks. Excited to once again be in conversation with an old friend, Filmmaker Skinner Myers. We talk this time about the state of independent film, Sean Bakers recent Oscar win, and his statement about indie film and figures like Baker represent a pernicious category indie movie making that is still fundamentally aligned with the imperialist project.

We also touch on our experiences as micro-budget free range filmmakers, and the conundrums that currently exist.

Looking forward to hearing folks on thoughts on this one! Leave' em in the comments! - Tumes

Filmmaker Magazine Article on The Truth About Independent Filmmaking

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Extremely honored this week to have Taylor Genovese from Iskra Books to talk about a truly special text, Alexander Bogdanov's Art and the Working Class.

Art and the Working Class is a rare text that we are lucky Iskra has taken on the task of translating and doing an edition for todays reader. This book has massive utility as discussions around class struggle have become once again prevalent and questions of how does the artist situate themselves within the struggle towards awakening the revolutionary consciousness of the working class remain of high importance.

Equally as interesting as the text is Bogdanov himself, a truly significant member of the Bolshevik's, and an extremely important figure in revolutionary politics, science and literature. Genovese and I discuss Bogdanov's ideas around communism, the arts, dialectical materialism, revolution and many more subjects. We also discuss Genovese's approach to translating the text and what engaging with Bogdanov's concepts has done for him as an artist, scholar and Marxist. Its truly a rich conversation, and look forward to you all engaging with it.

If you are interesting purchasing the text you can buy it directly from Iskra for 20% off.

To get a jump on the shows a week early and also recieve bonus content check out Mtume's Patreon and become a subscriber!