27 February 2017 After a weekend spent revamping the Foreign Influence website, I am ready to return to some projects put on hold at the end of 2016. Four topics in particular continue to hold my attention–Crip Theory and the development of a curriculum for Disability Studies, the ongoing search for the best ways to … Continue reading
by Brian Bergen-Aurand A Century of Black Cinema On this day in Black History Month, I want to introduce a ninety-minute documentary from the 1990s that aims a provide an overview of one hundred years of black cinema. The documentary is wholly centered on Hollywood and the denial or access black talent has had in … Continue reading
by Brian Bergen-Aurand While my wife and I were living in Singapore, we adopted two children from Ethiopia. When we brought them home, I searched for lists of children’s films with strong black characters, especially strong black female characters. One film atop many such lists is Disney’s 2009 The Princess and the Frog (written and … Continue reading
by Brian Bergen-Aurand Thinking over my earliest experiences with black film, reminded me of the 1963 film Lilies of the Field, directed by Ralph Nelson and starring Sidney Poitier and Lilia Skala. The story is a simple one: a traveling laborer stops for water at an Arizona convent and becomes the answer to the German … Continue reading
by Brian Bergen-Aurand “Always do the right thing.” ~Da Mayor For Black History Month 2017, I am writing on a black film each day. The expressions will be personal and critical. The scope will be limited to what I have seen and remember seeing. I will not be going into great detail about each film, … Continue reading
by Brian Bergen-Aurand Tention—condition of being stretched or strained, or in which pressure is exerted I have a penchant for exhibition catalogues. Ever since my first encounter with Jacques Derrida’s Memoirs of the Blind: The Self-Portrait and Other Ruins, written to accompany the 1990-1991 exhibition of the same name he arranged at the Louvre Museum, … Continue reading
by Brian Bergen-Aurand The Band’s Visit (Directed by Eran Kolirin, Israel/USA/France, 2007) disappointed me. The film has been very well received by critics. It has a 98% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes and has won “over 35 international awards.” And I’ll admit, I was a fan through the first 2/3 of the film. For sixty … Continue reading
by Brian Bergen-Aurand Although the trailer does not do it justice, the sound of Ossos (Pedro Costa, 1997) is what I cannot get out of my head. [While most of the film has no music on the soundtrack, the trailer has an engaging rock song laid over it.] If you do not already know Ossos … Continue reading
by Brian Bergen-Aurand An early installment in Arsenal Pulp Press’s QUEER FILM CLASSICS series, Helen Hok-Sze Leung’s Farewell My Concubine (2o10) takes a queer cultural studies approach to a close reading of Chen Kaige’s 1992 Chinese film, starring Leslie Cheung, Zhang Fengyi, and Gong Li. After reading this one short (120 pocket-sized pages) study from … Continue reading
by Brian Bergen-Aurand There is no doubt that at this point in history the neurotic, the pervert, and the psychotic cannot be adequately defined in terms of drives, for drives are simply the desiring-machines themselves. They must be defined in terms of modern territorialities. The neurotic is trapped within the residual or artificial territorialities of … Continue reading
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