A collaborative, animated, documentary film that critiques mainstream media and the prison industrial complex? Yes, please!

Watch here!

This intimate portrait of a group of young Filipino boys is so full of joy and heartache at the same time. Filmmaker Khavn De La Cruz shows various ways the boys escape from their harsh, bleak surroundings by playing rugby, singing karaoke, swimming, and sniffing glue.

http://dafilms.com/download/key/wyjA27zr9U

Jennifer Reeder’s little masterpiece about a substitute teacher’s classroom crisis is swirling with so many complex emotions. The film manages to be dark, funny, sad, honest, and ultimately hopeful all at the same time. Just like teenagers 😉

The title of the series comes from a Peter Tosh/Bob Marley tune which reminds us that young people are not to blame for the state of the world. They inherit the lessons and behaviors we give to them.

Much of my adult life has been spent working with young people of all ages. Over the years I’ve realized that being around children and young adults keeps me positive and hopeful about the future. Without them it’s all doom and gloom, in my universe.

So, to start us off on our journey this month, I’m featuring a film by a 16-year old Syrian filmmaker named Muna, one member of the innovative ANOTHER KIND OF GIRL COLLECTIVE. The group was formed in Jordan in 2015 by the documentary filmmaker Laura Doggett.

All the young filmmakers in the collective are refugees living in flux in Jordan, many in refugee camps. Despite the dire and bleak conditions they are living, the films are filled with so much beauty, wonder, and hope. They take their bare surroundings and imagine such colorful, rich, and boundless times ahead.

DREAMS WITHOUT BORDERS by Muna / Another Kind of Girl Collective

anotherkindofgirl.com

This Monday’s selection is “Sun Song” (2013/video/15min/silent) by Joel Wanek. Inspired by the sounds and philosophy of Sun Ra, this silent workaday evocation of earthbound interstellar travel features working class African American workers as seldom depicted: with grace and poetry. That Sun Song has garnered heady comparisons to work as varied as Nathaniel Dorsky’s, Andrei Tarkovsky’s “Solaris”, Chris Marker’s “Passengers” and Luis Bunuel’s “Illusion Travel’s by Streetcar” and “Exterminating Angel” gives some sense of how vibrant and resonant Wanek’s vision is.