To redeem: To take back, buy back, procure, deliver from sin. For some time now, I have been thinking a good deal about the poetry of Rumi in the context of the Turkish film Zenne Dancer, which opens with the epigraph: Dance in your blood, Dance, when you’re perfectly free. ~Rumi (1207-1273) More on Zenne … Continue reading
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Film Fests from Lavender Africa
This past week, just in time for Valentine’s Day, the University of Botswana hosted that country’s first LGBTI film festival, The Batho BaLorato Film Festival. The festival was organized by LEGABIBO, the organization in Botswana representing Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgendered, and Interexed people, and a number of other volunteers. Queer relations remain illegal in Botswana, … Continue reading
Inquiring about Jay Rosenblatt
–חשמל [chashmal] (from Hebrew, “speaking silence”) Born in New York in 1955, Jay Rosenblatt (often in collaboration with Caveh Zahedi, Stephanie Rapp, Dina Ciraulo, Jennifer Frame, or his daughter Ella Rosenblatt) has been making short collage and diary films since 1980, has taught film and video production at various schools in the San Francisco Bay area … Continue reading
Ethiopian Faces
Over the past year, I have been considering the Ethiopian photographs of Hans Silvester, especially his collections A Window on Africa: Ethiopian Portraits (2011) and Natural Fasion: Tribal Decoration from Africa (2008). Silvester started visiting the Omo Valley region of Ethiopia in 2003. Since then, he has returned at least two dozen times and has produced … Continue reading
Foreign Influence 