by Brian Bergen-Aurand Circumstance (2011). Director: Maryam Keshavarz. Writer: Maryam Keshavarz. Actors: Nikohl Boosheri / Sarah Kazemy / Reza Sixo Safai. Countries: France / USA/ Iran Circumstance– A fact or condition connected with or relevant to an event or action. One’s state of financial or material welfare. Circumstance often tops lists of recent LGBT cinema from the … Continue reading
Tag Archives: Brian Bergen-Aurand
Five Films by Apichatpong “Joe” Weerasethakul
by Brian Bergen-Aurand World-renowned Ethnic-Chinese, Thai independent filmmaker Apichatpong “Joe” Weerasethakul (born 1970) has composed one documentary, six critically-acclaimed feature films, and more than forty-five short films, videos, and photography installations since the early 1990s. He has won the Un certain regard prize (2002), Prix du jury (2004), and Palme d’or (2010) at the Cannes … Continue reading
Who are “they”?
by Brian Bergen-Aurand We were young people living in houses seemingly more populated by ghosts than by the living, with the old dead and the new. ~Jesmyn Ward Jesmyn Ward’s Men We Reaped (2013) is a memoir of her life growing up Black in rural Mississippi, the generations that came before her, and the men … Continue reading
The Children of Srikandi / Anak-Anak Srikandi
by Brian Bergen-Aurand Produced by the Children of Srikandi Collective, Indonesia/Germany/Switzerland, color, 74 mins., 2012. An omnibus documentary recalling the Mahabharata tale of the hero who is born a girl and becomes a boy, this essay film features nine queer women describing the paradoxes of non-normative life in Indonesia, the world’s largest Muslim country. There … Continue reading
Who Reads Foreign Influence?
by Brian Bergen-Aurand In 2014, Foreign Influence was viewed by about 6000 folks. Where do they all come from, you ask? Although folks clicked on Foreign Influence from 81 different countries this past year, most visitors arrived from these ten locations: 1. Singapore 2. United States 3. Brazil 4. Philippines 5. United Kingdom 6. Canada … Continue reading