This new podcast is hosted by two of the all-female team of academics, film programmers & social researchers behind website myDylarama, Abla Kandalaft and Coco Green. We’ll discuss films/TV series/screen-related matters in relation to social, racial and economic issues with occasional guests, and good indie international films. You can support us at https://ko-fi.com/mydy and subscribe at mydy.link/subscribe for offers, discounts and goodies from our partners.
Episodes
Tuesday Mar 23, 2021
Our Picks + The Obituary Of Tunde Johnson
Tuesday Mar 23, 2021
Tuesday Mar 23, 2021
This week, we are joined by poet and writer Ryan Ormonde to discuss Ali LeRoi's feature film The Obituary Of Tunde Johnson that was screened as part of the BFI Flare Festival.
The "timeloop" film which sees Tunde, a young Black gay man who is shot and killed by a police officer, relive his last day on Earth over and over again. We talk about the relationships, Black masculinity, race and of course drift off topic to talk about ice cream and skincare.
Top picks this week include Welsh crime drama Hinterland, Jack Black biographical comedy The Polka King and yet another Jack Black flick, Bernie.
As usual, comments and feedback welcome via Twitter @Mydylarama
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Tuesday Mar 16, 2021
Our Picks + Typical
Tuesday Mar 16, 2021
Tuesday Mar 16, 2021
We're stretching things a bit this week to include filmed theatre: our guest is director Anastasia Osei-Kuffour whose latest production is Typical at the Soho Theatre (available to stream online). The play stars Richard Blackwood as Christopher Alder, a Black man who died in police custody in 1998.
The play, a monologue that's halfway between poetry and rap recounting Christopher's last day and the acts of racism he experiences leading up to his death, highlights issues around racial stereotypes and institutional racism.
We discuss those with Ana as well as the implications of filming theatre and her work with Blackwood.
We flag the last call for short film submissions for the Emerging Filmmakers' Night's Spring edition, the current Media Democracy Festival - Mydy is proud to be a partner of the Independent Media Association - and ITV's crime drama Marcella!
As usual, comments and feedback welcome via Twitter @Mydylarama
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Monday Mar 01, 2021
Our Picks + Judas And The Black Messiah
Monday Mar 01, 2021
Monday Mar 01, 2021
Highlights this week include the Glasgow Film Festival, entirely online, with its usual strong selection and carefully curated programmes, running from 24 February to 7 March and MLK/FBI is a 2020 American documentary directed by Sam Pollard who co-directed the 1987 doc Eyes on the Prize, which traces the FBI's investigation of Martin Luther King. Obviously Eyes on the Prize comes up as we discuss our main film of the evening: Judas And The Black Messiah directed by Shaka King, a powerful and much-needed portrait of Black Panther Fred Hampton and a dramatised account of the BFI's infiltration of the Black Panthers and subversion of Hampton's community organising, which eventually led to his assassination.
We discuss the history and depiction of the Panthers, the concept of a "rainbow coalition", the professionalisation of community organising and the shift from class/race to identity politics.
As usual, comments and feedback welcome via Twitter @Mydylarama
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Thursday Feb 11, 2021
Our Picks + Be Kind Rewind
Thursday Feb 11, 2021
Thursday Feb 11, 2021
This week, guest and Mydylarama co-founder Judy Harris joins us to discuss the beauty of amateur cinema, community cohesion, gentrification, colourblind casting and the joys of play in Michel Gondry's Be Kind Rewind.
We also touch on the issues around race and casting choices in Netflix hit show Bridgerton.
When she's not doing revisions on a PhD on the utopian film theory of the poet Vachel Lindsay, which the viva panel described as "conceptually ambitious but let down by its organisation" - a statement which could be applied to her whole life - Judy works with community groups at Hackney CVS.
As usual, comments and feedback welcome via Twitter @Mydylarama
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Tuesday Jan 19, 2021
Our Picks + Women In Body Horror
Tuesday Jan 19, 2021
Tuesday Jan 19, 2021
This week, we are joined by Georgina Allan, film editor for the Radical Art Review to talk about women in horror, specifically focusing on Julia Ducournau's Raw and Alice Lowe's Prevenge and their representations of women as complex protagonists and instigators of violence (as opposed to helpless victims or mindless monsters).
We mention Jordan Peele's Us, Marina De Van's In My Skin and Don't Look Back and others.
Picks of the week include Aaron Moorhead and Justin Benson's mind warping, beautiful Synchronic and Channel 4 series Adult Material, a three-dimensional, intelligent and nuanced look at the world of porn and the tendrils that reach into all spheres of public and private life.
Finally, we flag the upcoming International Clermont-Ferrand Short Film Festival 29 Jan - 6 Feb - as official partner, Mydylarama will play host to interviews with all competition filmmakers - and Emerging Filmmakers Night's winter edition on 25 Jan, which includes three workshops (funding applications, screenwriting and festival strategy) that are free to join to our subscribers (mydy.link/subscribe).
As usual, comments and feedback welcome via Twitter @Mydylarama
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Tuesday Dec 29, 2020
Our picks + Antebellum & Century Of The Self
Tuesday Dec 29, 2020
Tuesday Dec 29, 2020
We are joined once again by Tom Barlow, chair of The Media Fund and host of the show News Club UK, to discuss the 2002 documentary series The Century of the Self. The Adam Curtis documentary analyses how Freudian theories are used for ideological control by consumer capitalism and governments. We talk about the implications of conceptualising freedom as autonomy and self-expression; and the conditions for building a democracy outside of emotional manipulation.
Tom will briefly discuss his pick of the week, BBC series Ladhood.
Antebellum is a 2020 American thriller film written and directed by Gerard Bush and Christopher Renz in their feature directorial debuts. While beautifully shot, Antebellum fails in its attempt explore the sociopathy of the white slaveholding class--mainly because the story isn't set in a slave society. The film can’t come to terms with slavery being the basis of capitalism and, as a result, relies on black pain to tell a meaningless story.
As usual, comments and feedback welcome via Twitter @Mydylarama
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Monday Dec 14, 2020
Our Picks + The Imposter & Little White Lie
Monday Dec 14, 2020
Monday Dec 14, 2020
Before we introduce our picks, we quickly shoehorn in one last point about last week's Three Identical Strangers...This week's top picks include Aaron Sorkin's historical legal drama The Trial Of The Chicago Seven, and Najwa Najjar's Palestinian road trip festival hit Between Heaven And Earth.
We discuss the utterly bonkers documentary The Imposter, in which an Algerian-French young man in Spain claims to be a 16-year-old Texan, who'd been missing for 3 years, and Little White Lie, the story of director Lacey Schwartz who grew up in a white family and was not aware that she was a half black until she went to university and her mother came clean about her African American biological father. We explore the pitfalls of affirmative action and the somewhat problematic utilisation of a Black identity by someone who'd been raised as white.
As usual, comments and feedback welcome via Twitter @Mydylarama
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Tuesday Dec 01, 2020
Our Picks + The Last Blackman in San Francisco & One Man And His Shoes
Tuesday Dec 01, 2020
Tuesday Dec 01, 2020
New fortnight, new episode.
Abla's picks of the week are the brilliant, creepy horror debut Caveat by filmmaker Damian McCarthy and Palestinian film Western Arabs, a chaotic, powerful and very personal look at the impact of displacement, by Omar Shargawi, as both films are reviewed on Mydylarama.
Our festival to watch out for is Documenta Madrid, flagged by Film Fest Report.
Coco's picks were The Lovers And The Despot - a documentary about an actress and her filmmaker husband who were forcibly taken to North Korea by Kim Jong-Il to help develop the country's film industry - and Three Identical Strangers - also a doc, about triplets that were reunited as adults after having been separated at birth for the purposes of a scientific experiment. Both films are on Netflix.
We focus on two feature films:
Joe Talbot's The Last Black Man in San Francisco (2019). Centred around a young black man, who with the help of his writer friend tries to reclaim his childhood home in a gentrified part of San Francisco, a home he claims had been built by his grandfather. We talk about the issues around gentrification and the increasing lack of rent control, as well as San Francisco's dwindling Black community.
And One Man And His Shoes (2020), an engaging documentary that came out in October and is now available on iPlayer, which paints the portrait of Michael Jordan's relationship with Nike and the furore around the release of the Air Jordans, and by extension the impact on mainstream Black culture. We discuss Nike's co-option of a certain type of Black culture, its place in the wider context of consumer capitalism and the focus on social corporate responsibility.
We'll have clips of individual reviews up on the Youtube page.
Saturday Nov 14, 2020
Our Picks + His House & The Social Dilemma
Saturday Nov 14, 2020
Saturday Nov 14, 2020
This week, Abla picks Seduced: Inside the NXIVM Cult, a sort of parallel documentary to the previously discussed The Vow, also about Keith Raniere and NXIVM but more explosive and revelatory and Egyptian horror series Paranormal.
She mentions award-winning documentary Tell Spring Not to Come This Year available to watch online all this month here.
Like the 2016 documentary Betting on Zero, about short sellers and their suspicions of fraud in the multilevel marketing company Herbalife, The China Hustle has a similar focus, but with Chinese companies running a similar scam. It’s believed that many of the reverse merger companies are overvaluing their companies by as much as 1000% to raise money in an IPO. After traders make their commission and companies get the cash, the value drops leaving any existing stockholders with worthless stock.
And...
Richard Wershe Jr. case
- White Boy Rick film (2018)
- White Boy (2017) documentary
Richard Wershe Jr. became an FBI informant at the age of 14—easy stuff like identifying dealers and drug houses in his Detroit neighbourhood.
His father, Richard Wershe Sr., was gun dealer and involved in the criminal world, so he negotiated the paid informant job on his behalf—rationalised it as they were targeting the more dangerous drug dealers
The case stands out because unlike the dirty cops, hired hitmen, and drug kingpins Wershe’s testimony and narcing put away, at age 17 his drug dealing saw him receive a life sentence. Ultimately released in 2018 after serving more than 30 years, it’s a story of black political power in Detroit. Rick Wershee Jr doesn’t have the political, social or economic power to fight his charges—nor was he about to move his whiteness beyond symbolism to access the white neighbourhoods, schools, jobs, and wealth that would’ve allowed him to serve ‘white time’ that he otherwise would’ve been entitled to.
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We discuss:
His House (2020)
The film tells the story of a refugee couple from South Sudan settling into English life as they await a decision on their asylum application. Spoiler, to escape the genocide they kidnapped a child to make their way onto a bus that was ahead of soldiers carrying out atrocities. Then, in their journey across the Mediterranian, the boat overturned and the husband, Bol, let the child drown while saving his wife, Rial.
They’re now haunted by many things, but mostly their descent into brutality in an effort to save their own lives.
A docu-fiction on the ills and dangers of social media, which includes talking heads from among the highest echelons of the tech community, many of which were at the helm of major social media networks and have since then left and are critical of the role it plays in disseminating false news, polarising opinion and disintegrating social relations.
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Monday Oct 26, 2020
Our Picks + Keenie Meenie: Britain's Private Army
Monday Oct 26, 2020
Monday Oct 26, 2020
Our guest this week is Phil Miller, investigative journalist and staff reporter at Declassified UK. We discuss the origins of British mercenaries in recent proxy wars and the extent of government culpability in his documentary (and the book it's based on) Keenie Meenie: Britain's Private Army (2020) - available online!
We've not been bawled over by any films so we're only highlighting a couple of festivals to watch out for this week: IDFA - the Amsterdam documentary film festival, one of the biggest in the world, which will be live and online and which Film Fest Report reminded us is taking place in November; and - yet again - the Palestine Film Festival who are holding a short but very strong series of screenings on 13-26 November 2020 at the Barbican in London and online, featuring surveillance camera-based doc An Unusual Summer, Cannes hit Gaza Mon Amour, Najwa Najjar's latest offering from a consistently brilliant filmography, more from Ameen Nayfeh, Lina Alabed... so many more names that attest to the vibrancy and excellence of the Palestinian film scene.
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About
Top Picks is hosted by two of film programmers and social researchers behind myDylarama. We use postcolonial, afro-pessimism, and Bourdieusian theories to discuss race and class in drama, documentary, mystery, and horror films. Now in its 10th year, myDy champions independent film using the medium as a platform for underrepresented and oft-ignored voices. myDy is official partner of the Clermont-Ferrand International Film Festival, and collaborates with The Media Fund, ByWire, and Emerging Filmmakers Night.
Abla Kandalaft, co-founder of myDylarama, is a trilingual film programmer, researcher, journalist and translator. She is passionate about economics, environmental issues, migration, and politics; and has worked with the BBC, Cannes Film Festival, and BFI. Coco Green is an aspiring academic and armchair critic. When not discussing racism in film, both on Top Picks and in the streets, she is writing about black counterpublics in hopes of completing her PhD.