Samuel Brown reviews “The Spy Behind Home Plate,” a 101 minute long film that tells the story of Moe Berg, American spy and Major League Baseball player.
Read MoreWit López speaks with Hot Bits Film Festival founders Evie Snax and Hear Byrne about their upcoming festival at Lightbox Film Center, beginning this Friday, April 26th, 2019!
Read MoreIf you’re still kicking yourself for missing MR. SOUL! at the 2018 BlackStar Film Festival, then we’ve got some good news for you. This Friday, January 25th, our friends at Scribe Video Center are hosting a Producer’s Forum screening of this joyous documentary about the life and work of Ellis Haizlip, who was not only a pioneering television host and black arts advocate, but also Scribe’s very first board chair. Director (and Ellis’s niece) Melissa Haizlip will be on hand for the screening, which will be preceded by Turnin’ the Tables, a documentary short by local youth filmmaker, J’Lynn Matthews. In this August 19, 2018 “From the Vault” post Imani Roach interviews MR. SOUL! cinematographer Hans Charles about his contributions to the film and his approach to filming black subjects. Read on and we’ll see you at Scribe on the 25th!
Read MoreA short 2016 movie seeks to rewrite art history to include Black artists who have historically been left out of the American art history canon. Roberta says it’s a compelling piece of filmmaking that shows some progress but a lot of work still to come for an equitable inclusion to be achieved.
Read MoreAfter fifty years is “Zen for Film” an experience, an object, a projection, or a relic? Holling examines the early history of the work, contemporaneous artworks that raised similar questions, and protocols for institutions that would borrow and exhibit examples from various public collections. Some of Holling’s questions are now being answered by the artist’s estate, museums, and film archives–and they offer inconsistent answers. “Zen for Film,” whose subject is entirely bound with its materiality, raises particularly complex questions, and Holling is thoughtful, dogged, and modest in searching for answers. Her examination raises points common to enough 20th- and 21st-century works that art historians concerned with the record as well as curators and conservators tasked with exhibiting and caring for them will have to acknowledge them.
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