Browsing: CinéEqual

In the metro film screenings or film festivals, there are certain kinds of boundaries,” says documentary filmmaker Saba Dewan “We never challenge our boundaries. We more or less know the nature of questions metro audiences would ask in post-screening discussions. Not so in small towns!”She says she has gone to many film festivals organised by ‘Cinema of Resistance’ in big and small towns, especially in the Hindi heartland. But the questions asked, the content of the discussion, the boundaries of intellectual thresholds that are pushed and the reinterpretation of the cinematic narrative have been refreshingly different and original. All these…

Credit to those responsible for the Purge series for recognizing its potential for redemption. What began as yet another movie with a promising premise but disappointing execution has become the ultimate vessel for social and political commentary in our age of stratification. The First Purge is, fittingly, the first one in the series to be truly cathartic for those feeling anxiety over the rise of the far right. It may not for everyone—you do have to already be on board with the overall Purge premise, even if you haven’t seen all of the movies. But after almost losing its way a few times,…

Opinions about Indian cinema’s latest trilingual social drama, Kaala (2018), directed by Pa. Ranjith, India’s Spike Lee, have congested media feeds recently. These coterminous appraisals are dominated by speculations about subversive mythopoeia, national cataclysms, or sub-national identities audio-visually asserted through an aggregation of starpower, symbols, and speech. Yet, for all the vivid autochthony saturating the film, it is neither parochial nor insular. Kaala’s protreptic narrative has an au courant global appeal. The preamble animation, an innovation inaugurated by Kollywood films like Anand Shankar’s Iru Mugan (2016) and Pushkar and Gayatri’s Vikram Vedha (2017), prologues the struggle for territorial control and land authority as the sine qua non of civilization. Thereby establishing Kaala’s narrative…

In the wake of global turmoil and Hollywood’s re-examination of its codes of conduct, the launch of Artists for Change, Artists4Change.org, the non-profit that is committed to playing a critical role in stimulating social change through film and digital content, arrives at a critical time. Founder Julia Verdin, an accomplished producer and award-winning director, brought together a group of like-minded film industry individuals in her belief that the power of collective voice can make a change. Verdin says, “Those of us who work in the film and TV industries carry an incredible responsibility in these troubled times”. Artists for Change…

A Thousand Girls Like Me a film directed by Sahra Mosawi-Mani is scheduled to screen today, June 20, 2018 at the Human Rights Watch Film Festival in New York and it will be coming to MUBI in 4 days. We had the opportunity of interviewing  Sahra Mosawi-Mani and we asked her to present her film to our audience. https://vimeo.com/276049308 A Thousand Girls Like Me begins in 2014 when, appearing on a national television show, Khatera publicly accuses her father: for more than 13 years, Khatera suffered physical abuse and repeated rape at the hands of her father, resulting in numerous pregnancies. Most of Khatera’s…

THE SQUARE captures the immediacy and intensity of the revolution from the nexus of Cairo’s Tahrir Square, catapulting us into the action from the 2011 overthrow of Hosni Mubarak, through military rule, and culminating with the ousting of Mohamed Morsi in the summer of 2013. The film provides a kaleidoscopic, visceral portrait of the events as they unfold through the eyes of several passionate activists—including one member of the Muslim Brotherhood and a young liberal, Khalid Abdalla, who has acted in films like THE KITE RUNNER. Armed with nothing more than cameras, social media, videos posted to YouTube, and a…

THE UNAFRAID is a feature length documentary that follows the personal lives of three DACA students in Georgia, a state that has banned them from attending its top state universities and disqualifies them from receiving in-state tuition at any other public college. Shot in an observational style over a period of four years, this film takes an intimate look at the lives of Alejandro, Silvia and Aldo as they navigate activism, pursuing their right to education, their personal struggles and triumphs, and fighting for their families and communities. THE UNAFRAID shows us what it means to grow up both American and undocumented in today’s…

“Naila and the Uprising” a film by Julia Bacha is scheduled to screen at New York Human Rights Watch Film Festival on June 16th. Naila and the Uprising: When a nation-wide uprising breaks out in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, a young woman in Gaza must make a choice between love, family, and freedom. Undaunted, she embraces all three, joining a clandestine network of women in a movement that forces the world to recognize the Palestinian right to self-determination for the first time. Naila and the Uprising chronicles the remarkable journey of Naila Ayesh and a fierce community of women at the frontlines,…

The Honest Struggle tells the story of a Muslim convert that after 25 years of incarceration, re-enters society in the South-side of Chicago to face the same streets that ruined his life. The film is a raw portrait of a man struggling with his past as a gang chief while trying to survive an honest life and redefine himself in a world in which he feels no belonging. To learn more about this film we had a text and video interview with Justin Mashouf, director of The Honest Struggle.  Justin Mashouf is a filmmaker and artist based in Los Angeles.Justin’s work…

Michael B. Jordan (“Black Panther,” “Creed,” “Fruitvale Station”) and Michael Shannon (HBO’s “Boardwalk Empire”; Oscar nominee for “Nocturnal Animals” and “Revolutionary Road”; Golden Globe nominee for “99 Homes”) star in HBO Films’ FAHRENHEIT 451. Directed by Ramin Bahrani (“99 Homes”) from a screenplay by Ramin Bahrani & Amir Naderi (“Vegas: Based on a True Story”), the drama is based on Ray Bradbury’s classic novel of the same name, depicting an alternate tomorrow in which media is an opiate, facts and history are rewritten, and “firemen” burn books. FAHRENHEIT 451 debuts SATURDAY, MAY 19 (8:00-9:30 p.m. ET/PT), exclusively on HBO. https://youtu.be/mNKwe9k55fs…