Browsing: CinéEqual

Give or take, it’s been about five to six years since #BlackLivesMatter became a thing on social media. By most accounts, the use of that hashtag began after the acquittal of George Zimmerman in the shooting death of African-American teenager Trayvon Martin. The deaths of Michael Brown (which led to protests and unrest in Ferguson) and Eric Garner in New York City and the street demonstrations that followed made the movement known all over the US and of course around the globe as well. Surely it’s an extension or a new mutation/update of the Civil Rights movement, with a little bit…

Science fiction (sci-fi) has served as both an ethical and moral gauge of human scientific endeavors since at least Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein in literature and Fritz Lang’s Metropolis in film. A number of books have looked at how science is portrayed in the movies with all of them bringing a unique perspective to the issue (in fact, IEEE Spectrum’s own Stephen Cass coauthored such a book just last year). Now, a new book written by one of the preeminent experts on how to recognize and prevent risks in emerging technologies brings a new perspective to the topic, and asks: Can we use sci-fi films as a road…

Angelena Bonet, founder and CEO of her companies Crystal Heart Productions and Crystal Heart Records, has won another two prestigious Awards of Recognition from the IndieFEST Film Awards. One award was given for Bonet’s biopic sequel documentary feature film “Angelena: Heart Of The Matter” in the Liberation/Social Justice/Protest category and Best Music Video for “Break The Chain.” “Angelena: Heart Of The Matter” (“A Time Of A Revolution”) is the second documentary feature film in her trilogy series. Continuing on from where “Angelena: Change The World” (A True Story) left off, Australian-born Bonet interviews high profile women’s rights leaders around the world such as President Obama’s Women’s Equality…

GUANGDONG, South China — For three centuries, quiet Zurong Village at the southernmost tip of China’s mainland hasn’t had much to offer visitors, aside from tropical fruit. But that all changed when a local businessman decided to make the small town the center of a nationwide film festival. For the past three years, the village has hosted the Zurong Dialect Film Festival, China’s first to celebrate the country’s dialects. The country is host to over 130 languages with countless regional variants, according to the Ministry of Education. However, dialects differ so greatly that Chinese speakers often cannot even understand them. In Zurong…

Carlos Amador is CIPC’s Organizing Director, based in Los Angeles. He brings a wide-range of organizing and campaign skills from his years as a national immigrant youth leader. He was previously the Project Manager of the Dream Resource Center at the UCLA Labor Center, where he worked on issues impacting immigrant youth nationally. He is a former Vice-Chair of the Board of Directors for the United We Dream Network, and a founding Steering Committee member of the California Immigrant Youth Justice Alliance. Carlos was also a key member of the successful national campaign that won the Deferred Action for Childhood…

The Apology depicts the personal journey of three women whose lives were upended when they were forced into sexual slavery during World War II. United Nations researchers report that between 1931 and 1945, the Japanese military forced an estimated 200,000 to 400,000 women and girls into institutionalized sexual slavery. Euphemistically referred to as “comfort women,” they typically ranged in age from 11 to 33 and were taken from Japanese colonies from Korea to Indonesia. Mobilized through forced recruitment, kidnapping, false employment offers or sale by family members and employers, they served in brothels supervised by the Japanese military. Seventy years…

Among other things, the film showcases how the campuses in Tamil Nadu are widely demarcated among the student population based on caste. Pariyerum Perumal (God Who Mounts a Horse) is a very strong film. It invites a society, which is entrenched with casteist prejudices, for a debate and asks people to rethink these extreme forms of incivility. It takes us through the highly emotional struggles of a scheduled-caste youth who aspires to become a spokesperson of dignity and human rights for his community. He thus wishes to become like his role model, Dr B.R. Ambedkar, an unparalleled revolutionary leader of modern…

Social-justice filmmakers are in constant search for important and crucial sources for subjects for their films. The new book by Medea Benjamin, Inside Iran: The Real History and Politics of the Islamic Republic of Iran, opens new horizons for those in search of captivating and pertinent issues. Inside Iran is a very honest and precise look into the relationship between Iran and the USA. The current U.S. administration’s policy of imposing unfair sanctions and beating the war drum by leaving the Iran Nuclear deal puts the lives of millions of Iranians at risk. Iran is among the nations listed in…

Social Justice Film Festival opened tonight at Seattle and will run until October 15th. Justice in Immigration – Undeterred October 5 @ 6:30 pm – 10:00 pm If hope is a discipline and democracy our foundation, we must face the inhumanity of separating families and dehumanizing communities. Join us for discussion and films documenting the changing lines that demarcate identity, immigration, and institutions. Centered around feature film Undeterred, this evening is about how Hope and Democracy transcend borders. Undeterred is a documentary about community resistance in the rural border town of Arivaca, Arizona. Since the creation of NAFTA, 9/11 and through the Obama and Trump…

The newest of the fall festivals wraps up today, and the Los Angeles Film Festival has announced Tom Shadyac’s powerful and inspiring true story Brian Banks as winner of its Audience Award for Fiction Feature Film and the acclaimed Stuntman as Audience Award choice winner for Best Documentary Feature. As the Toronto Film Festival annually proves, it is the Audience Award that often gets the most attention and is most representative of a particular film’s success at many of these fests. At its world premiere screening Saturday afternoon, Brian Banks received five standing ovations by my count as the key creative team and actors were brought up on stage…