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San Diego Latino Film Festival: Excellent Offerings from Mexico and Beyond

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By Mukul Khurana

It didn’t rain on the first day of the San Diego Latino Film Festival (now in its 23rd year). It did, however, rain heavily and briefly on the second day, as forecasted. That didn’t affect attendance on either of the initial two days. Maybe word got around after 23 years that SDLFF 2016 was in town at Fashion Valley AMC again. Maybe the rain caused people to seek shelter…

On the first day, Tiempos Felices (Mexico, 80 min. 2015) turned out to be the first surprise of many.   [Read more…]

#StandWithLincoln Incident Puts an Exclamation Point on Black History Month in San Diego

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An incident at San Diego’s historically black Lincoln High School on Friday involved students being tased and pepper sprayed by police from two agencies.

Students say police involvement was an overreaction to horseplay. The parent of a student who was jailed claims the arrest is revenge by the authorities. The ACLU says they are deeply concerned about what happened and are investigating.

The police say one officer suffered a concussion and has been placed on administrative leave. A cell-phone video shows the seemingly unharmed officer tasing a student laying face down on the ground.   [Read more…]

The Price of Beauty: ‘Guards at the Taj’ at the La Jolla Playhouse

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By Mukul Khurana

Shah Jahan translates roughly into the English “King of the World.” As such, Shah Jahan was an impressive ruler. In the seventeenth century, that meant that wars of conquest and constant expansionism were the order of the day. That also meant that the spoils of war and all that made the fifth Mughal Emperor of India a very wealthy man.

Having access to beautiful things made Shah Jahan want to replicate that beauty and he did that with great abandon when it came to architectural structures—he wanted to leave legacies behind. Ironically, he isn’t mainly remembered for many of those things. He is remembered for the Taj Mahal, the tomb and resting place for his favorite wife—Mumtaz Mahal.
  [Read more…]

Michael Moore Says His New Movie Will Change America

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“Free universal health care, free university, free day care, taxing and policing hedge fund millionaires—have already happened in nearly every other industrialized country in the world! And I have the evidence—and the film—to prove it!”

By Lauren McCauley / CommonDreamsWhere to Invade Next, which is said to be both his happiest and “most subversive” movie yet.

In the film, Moore travels to countries throughout Europe and also Tunisia to “pry loose from them the tools they’ve been using to make their countries happy, shiny places,” he writes, with the goal of “show[ing] millions of Americans what these countries have been hiding from us.” Such tools range from eight weeks paid vacation in Italy, to a year of paid maternity leave in Scandinavia, to women with “true equality and power” in Tunisia, to trusting prisons in Norway.

Moore, who is known for such works as Bowling for Columbine and Capitalism: A Love Story, penned an open letter to supporters last week explaining how a recent bout of pneumonia and subsequent hospital stay forced him to cancel all television appearances promoting the film.   [Read more…]

Human Rights Watch Film Festival 2016 in Balboa Park

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By Mukul Khurana

The 2016 Human Rights Watch Film Festival is in town and opened on Thursday, January 21 at the Museum of Photographic Arts in Balboa Park. This is not the first year for this kind of event, but the care taken in the selection of films and the scheduling seems to point to a well thought out experience. Credit goes to the collaboration between Paolo Zuniga of MOPA and Andrea Holley of Human Rights Watch (not to mention the excellent artists selected for the 2016 festival).   [Read more…]

How Hollywood Treats People of Color

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‘The Best There Is’: World Mourns Artistic Maverick David Bowie

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“I’m not a prophet or a stone aged man, just a mortal with potential of a superman,” Bowie once sang.

By Lauren McCauley / Common Dreams

The world on Monday mourned the death of David Bowie, the iconic rock star, record producer, artist, and performer whose influence spanned generations and whose ideas constantly pushed boundaries of creativity, sexuality, and custom.

Bowie’s death was confirmed by a post on his Facebook page, which said that the artist died peacefully in New York City on Sunday “surrounded by his family after a courageous 18 month battle with cancer.” He had just celebrated his 69th birthday on January 8.

Bowie, born David Robert Jones in Brixton, south London, was lauded as a performer who was always ahead of his time.   [Read more…]

For Peace and Love: Haskell Wexler’s Well-Lived Life

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By Abby Zimet / Common Dreams

After decades of insisting on using “our art to reflect human values,” incomparable cinematographer and tireless activist Haskell Wexler died this weekend at 93. Wexler helped create some of the best films of our time — while unceasingly “giving his gifts to the revolution” by highlighting issues of war, racism, poverty and torture – and accumulating a 500-page FBI file for his trouble. Wexler was best known by mainstream audiences for his work on big-name and often Oscar-winning films – Bound for Glory, In the Heat of the Night, Matewan, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and The Conversation until he fought with the directors.   [Read more…]

San Diego Celebrates the Dead: Días de los Muertos 2015

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By Brent E. Beltrán

Candles. Photos. Marigolds and other flowers. Some favorite foods. Maybe a beer or shot of tequila. We all remember differently our loved ones who have passed.

Some remember with regret, others with joy, sadness, longing. But we remember.

Death is but a natural part of life. We carry our dead with us in our hearts and some are hoisted upon the bony blades of their forbearers. But we remember.   [Read more…]

“Express Yourself”

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Acknowledging the Playwright Project’s
“Deborah Salzer Excellence in Arts Education Award”

By Ernie McCray

Being recognized
for any contribution
I’ve made to the arts
is like being recognized
for breathing
a breath,
like being identified
for being myself –
as I was raised by a mother
and a grandfather
and a great-aunt
and cousins
and a church
and more than a handful of neighbors
and a teacher or two
at a segregated school
to,
in the spirit of the Golden Rule:
Express myself.   [Read more…]

“Blueprints to Freedom” Made Bayard Rustin Come Alive

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By Ernie McCray

I saw “Blueprints to Freedom: an Ode to Bayard Rustin,” at the La Jolla Playhouse a week ago.

I was never so ready for a play to begin as I was that night because Bayard is a huge hero of mine, someone, whose memory, I’ve cherished for a long time.

To me, he was about as outstanding a human being as anyone could be. Ghandi, personified. So tirelessly alive and brilliant and loving and wise, a master as to how to organize, able to gather what he called “angelic troublemakers” together against all kinds of odds, in all kinds of weather. He brought us the moment when Martin envisioned a world, aloud, where “little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.”   [Read more…]

Straight Outta Compton to Right Now

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By Ernie McCray

I saw Straight Outta Compton
the other night.
It was a trip, fly, tight.
Kickass.
Jamming.
Hip.
Got to it
from the git with
“You are now about to
witness the strength of
street knowledge”…   [Read more…]

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