myDylarama

Our Picks + Women In Body Horror

Abla Kandalaft, Coco Green, Georgina Allan — 2021-01-19T10:35:57Z

This week, we are joined by Georgina Allan, film editor for the Radical Art Review to talk about women in horror, specifically focusing on Julia Ducournau's Raw and Alice Lowe's Prevenge and their representations of women as complex protagonists and instigators of violence (as opposed to helpless victims or mindless monsters).

We mention Jordan Peele's Us, Marina De Van's In My Skin and Don't Look Back and others.

Picks of the week include Aaron Moorhead and Justin Benson's mind warping, beautiful Synchronic and Channel 4 series Adult Material, a three-dimensional, intelligent and nuanced look at the world of porn and the tendrils that reach into all spheres of public and private life.

Finally, we flag the upcoming International Clermont-Ferrand Short Film Festival 29 Jan - 6 Feb - as official partner, Mydylarama will play host to interviews with all competition filmmakers - and Emerging Filmmakers Night's winter edition on 25 Jan, which includes three workshops (funding applications, screenwriting and festival strategy) that are free to join to our subscribers. See below!

As usual, comments and feedback welcome via Twitter @Mydylarama

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Our Picks + Waves

Abla Kandalaft, Coco Green, Matt Howsam — 2020-09-13T08:40:40Z

This week we are joined by Matt Howsam, a production coordinator in the VFX industry and a film critic.

We mention the hilarious and highly original One Cut Of The Dead by Shin'ichirô Ueda, a Japanese Zombie comedy in the style of some of the best mockumentaries out there and a homage to low budget filmmaking. Depending on where you are you can watch it on Shudder or buy the DVD (it's from 2017). Abla also highlights the Netflix series Unwell, which looks at the dark side of the wellness industry and some of the products and concepts currently being flogged on the market through - yet again - more MLM initiatives.

For our festival picks, this week we recommend Visionmaker's Indigenous Filmmakers Festival, which runs from 31 August to 5 October, the Encounters Short Film Festival, one of the world's best short ff, which runs from 18 September to 11 October and is offering a £10 pass! A few films to highlight are Mahdi Fleifel's 3 Logical Exits, Clermont-Ferrand Grand Prize winner Anthony Nti's Da Yie and Morad Mostapha's Henet Ward.

Matt recommends Women Make Films, a 14-hour doc series, and the Japanese cinema season, both on BFI Player.

Matt chose to discuss Trey Edward Shults's Waves, a dizzying and theatrical film about a family dealing with the aftermath of a tragedy. We discuss the highly cinematic and aesthetic qualities of the film, the impact that has on the emotional punch of the story and the portrayal of the characters, and the somewhat problematic or baffling portrayal of family dynamics that are very personal to the (white) director through the prism of a black family.

Our Picks + Black Is King (Special Guest)

Abla Kandalaft, Coco Green, George Crosthwait — 2020-08-19T16:41:18Z

For this episode of Mydylarama's Top Picks podcast, we're joined by our guest, academic, film programmer and Japanese Avant-Garde and Experimental Film Festival producer George Crosthwait. George Crosthwait.

George's pick of the week, and also his first trip back to the cinema since February, is Shannon Murphy's debut film 'Babyteeth'. An Australian coming-of-age drama that both impressed and confused him due to it's tonal eccentricities.

Abla's picks of the week include Richard Pryor: Omit The Logic (2013), now available on Sky, a pretty engaging and informative documentary about the comedian's life, and a couple of festivals to look out for: the Cologne International Film Festival, whose first - and entertainingly eclectic - edition will run on 11-12 September 2020 across various venues in the city, and the London Kurdish Film Festival (15-24 August), offering a collection of 50 screenings carefully curated into various themes, all available ONLINE and for FREE!

George's choice for this episode take the podcast deep into the beehive for Beyoncé's ambitious new visual album 'Black is King'. A kaleidoscopic collage of symbolism, music and visual splendour, involving an impressive rollcall of African diasporic performers and artists, 'Black is King' is the first in a reported three picture deal between Beyoncé and Disney.

We discuss the film's aesthetic qualities and cultural merit, as well as its more problematic dimensions, its simplistic, potentially fetishistic depiction of a vague and all-encompassing "African" culture, its celebration of opulence and capitalist ambitions as a lever of Black empowerment, and the way it highlights a melancholic search for identity, roots and heritage among many African Americans. We mention a number of other films, namely The Burial Of Kojo, that you can watch on Netflix, the excellent Black Girl by Ousmane Sembene, freely available on YouTube!

As an aside, here is an article Abla mentions about Disney's dodgy credentials when it comes to matters of race and ethnicity - not to mention its history of plagiarism, sexism and dubious business practices.

Our Picks And American Horror Story: Apocalypse

Abla Kandalaft, Coco Green — 2020-08-05T14:38:44Z

Another fortnight, another episode! We start with our picks and move on to a discussion about American Horror Story: Apocalypse (S8, 2018).

As huge horror fans, we'll have other episodes down the line in this genre....

Coco's Top Pick is American Son (2019), performed as a one set straight play, in which an interracial couple waits at the police station for news of their teenage son's whereabouts, revealing the lies a family has told themselves about political race and the limitations of family and love. Despite the gratification of seeing Nia Long and Omar Epps in a sexy thriller, the best thing to say about Fatal Affair (2020) is that it should be saved for date night when you don't really need to finish the film. Two documentaries worth watching are Cannabis (S1E5, The Business of Drugs, 2020), which provides the history of small businesses pushing for legalising the cannabis industry in California and the encroachment of big businesses, and Holy Hell (2016), chronicling 22 years of the Buddhafield cult with file footage from the their videographer, Will Allen, and capturing the emotional journey of Allen's path to accepting the truth.

Abla's picks are thin on the ground, so thankfully Coco's detailed comments more than make up for that! These are Season 1 of The Sinner on Netflix, an intriguing suspenseful watch, led by Jessica Biel and Bill Pullman who both pull off nuanced and engaging performances. Abla brings it up because it illustrates a point about some police departments in the US that resorted to pinning crimes on one person to help expedite cases. This was discussed in this thoroughly informative podcast: In The Dark (Season 1). She's also flagging the upcoming Independent Iraqi Film Festival, which will be screened online, showcasing work often made in very difficult conditions. Keep on eye out for updates on their website.

American Horror Story (2011–present) is a 9 season series that airs on FX. Apocalypse (S8) incorporates the characters and storylines from S1, the 12-episode Murder House (2011) and S3, the 13-episode Coven (2013–14). Apocalypse can be summarised as Hogwarts meets The Shining (1980) meets Ghost (1990) meets Rosemary's Baby (1968) meets The Exorcist (1973) meets Lost (2004–2010) meets The Stand (1994). Although Coco thinks the film does avoid the magical Negro trope, which is endemic in horror and fantasy genres, the Benetton Dream Team cast Blacks, Asians, and Latinos is not enough to cover up the two-dimensional strong, black, and unnecessarily single women, e.g., Queenie (Gabourey Sidibe) and Voodoo Queen Marie Laveau (Angela Bassett); but the series is good fun overall, telling an old story in an interesting way, so is recommended.

Our Picks And The Staircase

Abla Kandalaft, Coco Green — 2020-07-21T11:32:33Z

In this episode, we discuss our picks of the fortnight and focus on true crime documentary The Staircase and the issues that it brings up.

The Dark finale was definitely a highlight, a truly gripping series, with twists and turns as bonkers as those in Lost, with none of the incoherence and sheer wackiness. Palestinian filmmaker Sameer Qumsieh's doc Walled Citizen, in which he explores travelling with the world's lowest ranking passport was screened as part of the Galway FF selection. You will hopefully be able to catch it at the UK Adventure Travel film festival and the Manhattan Film Festival in August.

Kaveh Abbasian's A Long Distance podcast is on Soundcloud. Art of Persia is still available on BBC iPlayer.

Korean Film Nights and Birkbeck's season- Trapped! The Cinema of Confinementstarts this week.

Made-for-TV movie The Clark Sisters: First Ladies of Gospel(2019) proved to be more than a melodrama. It's about the price one family paid to change the gospel genre forever and the moving concert scenes are the icing on the cake. Other top picks are College Behind Bars (2019), a four-part documentary series profiling the Bard Prison Initiative (BPI) which is a vehicle for inmate rehabilitation, redemption and transformation; and Mucho Mucho Amor: The Legend of Walter Mercado (2020) which raises questions around gender and sexuality in Latin American media representation, but bizarrely not race, providing a cautionary tale of ownership and exploitation in show business.

We'll be focusing on Secorro's recommendation - The Staircase, currently available on Netflix, and discuss issues it brings up around culpability, social and marital expectations, the nature of factual evidence and all sorts of anecdotes. Tip: Watch ALL 13 episodes to understand the full scope of the discussion!

Top 5 on Netflix - The Black Middle Classes

Abla Kandalaft, Coco Green — 2020-07-09T13:15:15Z

Mydy's second podcast! It's the second part Secorro's look at the Netflix Black Lives Matter collection and associated films. We're still tinkering with tech and format. Other episodes will feature discussions with more back and forth, as well as interviews and guest spots. As always, comments welcome!

This week, from five films on Netflix, (1) Self-Made: Inspired by the Life of Madam C.J. Walker (2020); (2) Strong Island (2017); (3) Skin (2019); (4) I Am Not Your Negro (2016); and (5) Black Privilege (2019) emerges the theme of the ‘Black Middle Classes.' While they all hit the mark for entertainment value, some fall short in misrepresenting a fantasy of black life that is more based-on-aspirational than matter-of-fact; and the documentaries provide insights on the functions, politics, and practices of black middle classes.

In light of the solidarity expressed by the Black Lives Matter movement - and other protesters and campaigners - with Palestinians, our intro is about Palestinian films that shed light on the current issue of annexation. Abla talks about the London Palestine Film Festival collection, Mats Grorud's The Tower (available via Amazon Prime), Wassim Safadi's State of Siege (available on YouTube) and Mahdi Fleifel's A World Not Ours (also Amazon Prime). Get in touch if you want more info about any of these!