By Ade D. Adeniji Mr. SOUL! explores America’s first Black variety television show SOUL!, which ran from 1968 to 1973, and was steered by pioneering Black producer and host Ellis Haizlip. Many have likely seen the pristine sets of SOUL! and not even know it. The series featured legendary black musicians, artists, athlete-activists, and thinkers … READ MORE

By Nadine Dornieden The $100+ billion video game industry is big. So big, in fact, that it dwarfs both the film and music industry combined. Gaming as a hobby has become much more popular every year since the 1990s, after Nintendo paved the way with their seminal game Super Mario Bros. for the Nintendo Entertainment System, … READ MORE

By Lennlee Keep What do Pepe the Frog, the Spanish Inquisition, the blinking guy, the French Revolution, concern for the environment, and the Third Reich all have in common? These are all ideas that spread until they became pervasive throughout a culture or country. According to evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins, they are also all cultural … READ MORE

Filmmakers Arthur Jones and Giorgio Angelini both bring very unique artistic backgrounds to the drawing table that led to the fruitful collaboration for Feels Good Man, which is Jones’ feature film debut. Both are well-suited to tell the vivid tale of artist Matt Furie and his poor cartoon frog creation, Pepe, who went on a … READ MORE

Filmmaker and teacher Chico Colvard’s first feature doc, Family Affair, premiered at Sundance and was the first film acquired by Oprah Winfrey for her cable channel, OWN. The searingly personal documentary explored his family’s own troubled history that ultimately had a message of forgiveness and resilience. While his new film Black Memorabilia is less personal, it maintains … READ MORE

One of the many quiet revelations for me in the documentary The Art of the Shine is that despite being in what seems like a casual and disposable culture, many people these days actually still take great pains to care for their shoes, including partaking in the ancient art of shoe shining. Whether brown leather … READ MORE

[Note: Please enjoy this guest essay on Iranian artists and censorships, in conjunction with the broadcast premiere of When God Sleeps, by artist and game creator Kurosh ValaNejad. See more on him at the end.] by Kurosh ValaNejad, guest contributor In the Islamic Republic of Iran, artistic expression is not denied.  Iranians can sing and dance … READ MORE

The thing about claiming territory and property is that it takes up space, and taking up space literally makes a huge statement; it becomes a platform for discussing who built something there, and why. So when black musician Daryl Davis shares his collection of former KKK members’ robes and his hopes of opening a “Museum … READ MORE

“I love cats because I enjoy my home; and little by little, they become its visible soul.” – Filmmaker Jean Cocteau (Orpheus; Beauty and the Beast) National Cat Day is October 29, a day designed to both honor our feline friends and lend support to cats in need. There are an estimated 74 million pet cats … READ MORE

As we learn in A Ballerina’s Tale, Nelson George’s new documentary about Misty Copeland [February 8; check local listings], Eurocentric standards of body shape, muscle tone, and skin color excluded dancers who didn’t fit the wan mold demanded of prima ballerinas. All that changed in the summer of 2015, when Misty Copeland, a rising star already transcending the rarified … READ MORE

Elizabeth Streb’s POPACTION pushes her performers to their athletic limits, and it got us wondering: what other forms of extreme performance art are out there? Not surprisingly, the human mind is capable of journeying to some quite intense places. Here are but a few.

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Filming a famous Chinese dissident in a land where he is a wanted man was both exhilarating and troubling for filmmaker Alison Klayman. “All of a sudden, for the first time, Ai Weiwei had disappeared. He was disconnected, with no phone, no Twitter, no contact with anyone. He had no voice.” 

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