On The Grind is a short documentary about kids of color growing up in Long Beach, California who escape their harsh realities through skateboarding. The film was predominantly shot at 14th Street Skate Park, also known as Ghetto Park, a run down facility that local Long Beach skaters treated as a sanctuary. The film explores their lives in the aftermath of losing their close friend, Michael K Green; a talented skateboarder who was in transition to becoming a professional skateboarder. …
Tag: film
Recently I wrote an article about East Africa’s rising electronic music scene for bandcamp. Read it here. As a 90’s kid, when Nas said, “Hip-Hop is dead” it seemed like something that needed to be said, albeit shortsighted. Responding to Nas’s 2006 proclamation, Palestinian kids were saying “Hip-Hop is not dead it lives in Gaza.” In Kenya, the disputed 2007 presidential election made the country explode into mayhem. 1,100 people were killed in two months. Most of them were hacked …
The reality of African-American directors making Japanese movies isn’t as rare as it may sound. Aside from Emmanuel Osei-Kuffour’s Born With It, there are several others, including director Darryl Wharton-Rigby, a Baltimore native whose been living in Japan on and off for fifteen years. He wrote, directed, and produced his second feature film Stay (2018). Set in Tokyo, Japan, the story is a cross-cultural romance about finding love at the wrong time. Ryuu, a former salary man, is an addict …
The documentary is about Chiho Sato, a Japanese filmmaker who was living in France when the 3/11 earthquake hit her hometown of Fukushima. Her family lives in the “The Voluntary Evacuation Zone,” 37 miles away from TEPCO (Tokyo Electric Power Company)’s Fukushima Daiichi Power Plant. Amid the earthquake and subsequent tsunami, the Fukushima Daiichi Power Plant had a core meltdown, resulting in a catastrophic nuclear accident. In her family’s area, nobody talked about the disaster. It was considered forbidden and …
On May 13, 1985, after years of conflict and fighting between the city of Philadelphia and the controversial radical group MOVE, shit hit the fan. The police evacuated the residence surrounding the MOVE headquarters; cut the electricity, surrounded the compound, and a firefight broke out that lasted for hours. Ten thousand rounds of ammunition were fired at the group. MOVE had four guns, but no automatic. Under the direction of local authorities, the police dropped a military-grade explosive on the …
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