“I don’t care where we go. I don’t care what we do. I don’t care, pretty baby, Just take me with u.” Ever since Prince first whisked Apollonia off on his motorcycle to get purified in the waters of Lake Minnetonka in the 1984 rock film Purple Rain, The Artist has been an unlikely source […]
Travel, Inspired by Prince Read More
On a plane over the Atlantic Ocean, I watched The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, the modern film adaptation of a Depression-era short story about an unremarkable everyman stricken by sporadic daydreams of heroism. In the story, mundane tasks inspire epic flights of fancy in the mind of the protagonist, who appears zoned out to
The Not-So-Secret Life of Walter Mitty Read More
Feeling uninspired these days? Want to travel, but can’t? Eat Pray Love just not looking all that relatable to your demographic? Then check these out on DVD: four of my favorite black expat films, each one detailing an experience that I can relate to one way or another, from running away to running towards. The
The Best Black Expat Films (Not that there are very many, anyway.) Read More
Movie spies have always led the glamorous life of cool jazz, shaken martinis, flame-throwing shoehorns, easy sex, and jet-lag-less travel. With the perfect femme fatale to match each perfectly-tailored blazer, these characters fit the classic definition of “fly” as an adjective: good-looking, sophisticated, memorable. I’m not a secret agent, nor do I wish to be
As an educator, fighting ignorance is my job. As black man who is also an expatriate educator, fighting ignorance can be an all-consuming yoke around my neck. Even some of the most highly-educated people, with many years of traveling to the US reflected in their passports, have no clue about the black experience in the
Fighting Ignorance with Film Read More
San Francisco’s black population has declined from 13% in 1970 to 7% today. Micah sees himself as less than one-in-ten; Joanne sees herself as just one. Medicine for Melancholy explores love, race, and, to my mind, America’s most beautiful city. Watch: Then watch:
From the AV Room: Of Isolation and Melancholy Read More
Recently screened at the Havana Film Festival New York, the 12-minute short film, Hispaniola, tackles Haitian-Dominican relations on the Caribbean’s second-largest island. Director Freddy Vargas shows us how childhood friendships can be marred by issues of race, class, and nationality as we watch a rich, light-skinned Dominican kid befriend the son of Haitian migrant workers
From the AV Room: Hispaniola Read More
Photo by MorBCN Over the weekend, I went to the movies to catch Woody Allen’s much-discussed Vicky Cristina Barcelona with the hope of being transported to Spain’s legendary Mediterranean port city with the Freddy Mercury theme song. I was indeed wrapped up in the topsy-turvy tale of polyamory, laughing at the snappy dialogue and more
Vicky Cristina…Rio?: Movies That Take You There Read More
