Writing about Black Panther and googling it while trying to avoid spoilers is like boxing yourself. But learning about Wakanda’s king still got me hyped. A lot of themes came out of writing this Black Panther post for Tokyo Weekender. The movie is a treasure trove of symbolism and possibility. Here, the cultural and social impact of this film is epic. For kids like my four-year-old daughter and parents like me who worry about their child’s mental health and safety, …
Category: Film
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film
The first time I met Harlemite rapper, producer, filmmaker, and actor Mtume Gant aka Core Rhythm, was in our Harlem Renaissance class at SUNY Purchase College. Gant usually had the most to say when it came to class discussions about our reading assignments. He was so vocal and passionate that I felt intimidated to raise my hand. Thoughtful, and progressive ideas effortlessly sprung off his tongue. There were few places where our opinions diverged. Most times, I was envious of …
Born With It is a short film about an African-Japanese boy who identifies as Japanese, but the world sees him differently. Written and directed by Emmanuel Osei-Kuffour, Jr., the story explores isolation, alienation, and racism. Aside from the heartbreaking, yet revealing documentary Hafu, Born might be the first of it’s kind: it’s a scripted film, Japan is a vital character, and it exclusively centers a half black half Japanese kid struggling to make sense of who he is. It’s a tiny film that needs to be seen. Emmanuel and …
At full disclosure, I went to college with filmmaker Sean Weiner. He even filmed, directed and edited a video for a Stolen Music Imprint posse cut. He finished it and we got a copy, but it never saw the light of day for a lot of forgotten reasons (It was well over a decade ago). It looked dope, but I remember hating my verse. The short documentary film, 11.15.91 is about Weiner dealing with race, identity, and becoming what you are, instead of …
After a year of doing the weekly posts “On The Scope” and “Around The Way” I noticed how the music, art, culture, film, politics and news in our TMG posts was starting to overlap each other, 2014 was a wacky year. I had a talk with editor Tracy Jones and we decided to revamp our weekly post to reflect the intersections of seemingly different worlds we’ve been observing, to juxtapose and highlight overlaps in music, art, culture, film, politics and …
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