Category Archives: Video

Brother to Brother: queer voices from the Harlem Renaissance

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I recently watched Brother to Brother, a partly fictional/partly true story about a radical queer artist circle within the Harlem Renaissance that called themselves the Niggerati. It was a surprisingly good film that attempts to introduce an important tendency from the 1920s to a younger audience today. I for one did not know much about the figures depicted in the film before watching it.

Well-known artists like Langston Hughes and Zora Neal Hurston were in this milieu, as well as lesser known artists like Wallace Thurman and Richard Bruce Nugent. The circle lived together in a sort of black artist’s commune in Harlem that was composed of a younger, bohemian crowd. The film focuses on their production of one issue of what seemed to have been a promising journal called Fire!! (production ceased due to a lack of funds).
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Stay tuned…and some flicks

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So I’m already a jive turkey and it’s only a couple weeks into my blog!  I have two pieces I want to post soon, just need to finish ‘em, so stay tuned!  I’m trying to work on a feminist application of the Theses on Feuerbach by Señor Marx.  And, reflecting on some recent experiences in my own organizing, I’m wrapping up a piece taking the Replace Yourself essay here and thinking through the ways in which we should take a similar approach when developing a feminist culture & practice within political organizations.  These sound like good ideas (to me, at least) and hopefully I can pull them together in a decent enough fashion to share them with you!

In the meantime, to help bide the time (is that the saying?) I figured I’d post some a list of some movies I’ve seen in the last few months that have really touched me in profound ways. The trailers don’t really do them justice so you’ll just have to take my word for it if you haven’t seen them.

Aimee and Jaguar

XXY

Spring Forward

Double Dare

Nick Swardson: Seriously, Who Farted? (sorry, no preview but you can stream it on Netflix!)

Alienation in “Blue Valentine”

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**Spoiler Alert**

I watched Blue Valentine last night. It’s really a heart-breaking story and it speaks volumes to the alienation and pressures that plague all relationships under capitalism. The film follows this couple, Cindy and Dean, simultaneously showing both the very beginning of their relationship when they fall in love and the very end of their relationship as they are falling out of love. What I like about it is that it doesn’t get caught up in details of why they fall out of love or even how. The film focuses solely on these two moments and the simultaneous beauty and pain of both.

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