Letterboxd — Your life in film

The American communists interviewed in Seeing Red are forever devastated by the "Secret Speech" of 1956. To our present, the question of whether Khrushchev lied or how much was truth might haunt (if you are so inclined).

A counter-history on the topic is available to read by Domenico Losurdo in Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and hopefully soon in English.

THE GOAT. The title can refer to Harun Farocki.

After colonialism's infamy became insurmountable in public relations, the binary of developed and underdeveloped became the preferred method. The promotion of developmentalism in the Third World was in reality the metropole’s backhanded and reinvigorated intention to control the wealth and resources of the formerly colonized. Sometime at the end of the last century, in Haiti, the narrative of development was replaced with a new narrative of patronizing humanitarian aid. Raoul Peck’s Assistance Mortelle (2013) is a welcomed exposé of this, although like in I Am Not Your Negro (2016), Peck's clichéd documentary forms detract from the strength of the message.

Geronimo: An *Apache Legend

Fucking yanquis, man...

To hell with Rimbaud and Artaud. Surrealism's birthright is Latin America through Lautréamont and Quiroga and the particular hauntology that comes with being a Latin American.

Like the portrait and narrative of Jeanne Dielman, but held to a smashed mirror.

Chantal in L’homme à la Valise: the body auteur moving through doorways and the infinite space of a room. Here she is alone, but she is not lonely. She wants to be alone again. Who is alone when there is liberty in work?

Ford's Only Angels Have Wings* is just as fatalistic as Hawks', but instead of the inimitable persona of Cary Grant, we get a magnificent asshole who vindicates himself in the end. Somewhat.

Only Assholes Have Wings

It is difficult to turn off the usual symbolic burden and the iconicity inherit in the camera’s registry when you have the sensitivity of a portraitist like Khalik Allah does. However, the soundtrack here is truly like a hand outstretched and reaching for a past that disappears in time, a past that is redeemed as it is recorded in its passing. The redemption is in the portraits moving. Nowhere is it more impressionable than when Khalik Allah records reflections on Deli windows. They are punctums of the film for me.

Field Niggas is an important film against historical and social amnesia.

I make a cameo at approximately 1 hour and 52 minutes.

I saw Pompeii to have a laugh at vulgar auteurists. But, my God, I didn't laugh. I saw a great deal that was strange, even stupid. But I also saw CGI that was delicate, almost too sensitive. A city washed through by the ocean and ravaged by fireballs. Impossible details. The earth fissured into catacombs. I felt as though I touched and heard the panic of doomed lives struggling with their fate. No sound came from their breasts as they embraced alone when the fire engulfed them. My God, I didn't laugh.