0899 – Blindspotting (2018)

timespace coordinates: 2010’s Oakland California

Blindspotting is a 2018 American comedy-drama film written, produced by and starring Daveed Diggs and Rafael Casal. Carlos López Estrada directs while Janina Gavankar, Jasmine Cephas Jones, Ethan Embry, Tisha Campbell-Martin, Utkarsh Ambudkar, and Wayne Knight also star. The plot follows a parolee with three days left on his sentence, only to have him witness a police shooting that threatens to ruin a lifelong friendship.

The screenplay for Blindspotting was written by Rafael Casal and Daveed Diggs over a period of nine years. Daveed, who grew up in Oakland, and Rafael, who grew up in bordering Berkeley, California, felt that cinematic portrayals of the San Francisco Bay Area have constantly “missed something”. They wanted to draw attention to the culture, community, and sense of “heightened reality” that shape life in Oakland. The film addresses issues of gentrification, police violence, and racism. (wiki)

blindspotting.movie / imdb

0894 – The Weird World of Blowfly (2010)

The Weird World of Blowfly is a 2010 documentary film about rapper and hip hop musician Clarence Reid, a/k/a Blowfly, directed by Jonathan Furmanski. In addition to Reid, the film features collaborators Tom Bowker and Otto von Schirach along with perspectives from Chuck D, Ice-T, and Die Ärzte. (wiki)

Clarence Reid is a musician who wrote and produced romantic and spiritual songs for some of the greatest Southern soul and R&B acts of the 1960s and ’70s. He is also the gonzo performer Blowfly, Clarence’s freaky alter ego and the original X-rated rapper. “The Weird World of Blowfly” explores both sides of this hilarious and controversial artist, providing a rare, inside peek at the infamous linguist’s daily life. Now 69-years-old, with a gold-spangled superhero costume and a catalog of the world’s raunchiest tunes, Blowfly tours the world, still struggling for success and recognition after 50 years of making music. The film highlights both Clarence’s and Blowfly’s unique contributions to music history, including Top-10 R&B hits and what might be the world’s first rap song, recorded in 1965. Shot over the course of two years, the film follows Clarence at home and around the world, featuring dozens of classic Blowfly songs as well as new hits. A revealing portrait of an unheralded man… (imdb)

887 – We the Animals (2018)

timespace coordinates: rural upstate New York during the 1980’s

We the Animals is a 2018 American drama film directed by Jeremiah Zagar and written by Zagar and Dan Kitrosser, based on the novel of the same name by Justin Torres. The film stars Evan Rosado, Raúl Castillo, Sheila Vand, Isaiah Kristian, and Josiah Gabriel.

“Dreamlike and haunting, We the Animals approaches the coming-of-age odyssey with a uniquely documentarian eye.” rottentomatoes.com

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imdb

175 – Beasts of the Southern Wild (2012)

878 – Life in the Shadow of the Wall (2017 Documentary | TV Mini-Series)

Life in the Shadow of the Wall Two-part documentary looking at the Trump administration’s plans to build a wall along the US-Mexico border, and examining whether it will bring about the desired outcome.

imdb

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479 – Human Flow (2017)

872

Robin D. G. Kelley: What Is Racial Capitalism and Why Does It Matter? (YouTube)

“The purpose of racism is to control the behaviour of white people, not Black people. For Blacks, guns and tanks are sufficient” Otis Madison

858

868 – William T. Vollmann

The Most Honest Book About Climate Change Yet

“Vollmann’s undertaking is in the vanguard of the coming second wave of climate literature,  books written not to diagnose or solve the problem, but to grapple with its moral consequences.”

No Immediate Danger: Volume One of Carbon Ideologies

No Good Alternative: Volume Two of Carbon Ideologies: 2

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William_T._Vollmann

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William T. Vollmann | Carbon Ideologies

|YouTube

866

‘The country blooms – a garden, and a grave’, Oliver Goldsmith ‘The Deserted Village’.

Nick Groom – ‘Let’s discuss over country supper soon’ – Rural Realities and Rustic Representations

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“The whole ambition of the picturesque was to rework the natural world into a ‘landscape’ – a word that came to England at the end of the sixteenth century
from the German, via the Dutch. Early English uses of ‘landskip’ are strongly cultural – the word is used to describe paintings,
particularly the backgrounds of paintings, and thereby any view that could conceivably be painted.”

“The picturesque encouraged the critical appreciation of nature as a spectacle. Observers of a scene – the word ‘scene’ itself reveals the implicit theatricality of viewing – became an audience, by turns appreciative or critical.
Hence natural landscapes became part of culture, and were understood, judged, and painted according to artistic conventions and aesthetic theories.
For a growing proportion of the increasingly urban population, initial encounters with natural landscapes would be through the medium of art: representations delivered either by pastoral poetry or in picturesque images.”

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‘In grand scenes, even the peasant cannot be admitted, if he be employed in the low occupations of his profession:  the spade, the scythe, and the rake are all excluded.’ What was allowed was pastoral idleness:  the lazy cowherd resting on his pole . . . the peasant lolling on a rock’, an angler rather than a fisherman, and gypsies, banditti, and the occasional individual soldier in antique armour. The image of the countryside  presented therefore looked very much in need of improvement – slack, inefficient, indigent, lawless, and archaic. Moreover, once ‘improved’ the landscape was likely to be as empty of agricultural labour as the picturesque depicted it since nearly all the peasantry would have been forced off the land.