political – Page 3 – PopCult Reviews

Comic Book Review – Palestine

Palestine (Fantagraphics)
Written and illustrated by Joe Sacco

Journalist/cartoonist Joe Sacco visited the Palestinian territory during the First Intifada (1987-1993). You may have seen the word, Intifada lately, and, depending on how you had explained it to you, you very possibly got the wrong definition. The Intifada was a period of sustained protest and civil disobedience by Palestinians against the Israeli occupation. 1987 was the twentieth anniversary of the Arab-Israeli War, which saw the occupation seizing even more territory, pushing the indigenous Palestinians into smaller & smaller walled-off spaces. Sacco spent a lot of time visiting the West Bank and Gaza Strip, having conversations with Palestinians of all ages who had all experienced brutality at the hands of the Western occupying force. He recreates these moments in this incredibly moving graphic novel.

PopCult Podcast – Problemista/Civil War

This is a wildly divergent A24 double feature. One film is a comedy about the immigrant experience in NYC. The second follow journalists through a war on American soil.

Movie Review – Moolaadé

Moolaadé (2004)
Written and directed by Ousmane Sembène

This was Ousmane Sembène’s final film. He passed away in Dakar in 2007 at the age of 84. For this last picture, the filmmaker focused his energy on a critique of his own culture. Female genital mutilation or circumcision is a common practice in several African countries. It’s traditionally performed with an iron sheet or knife. An elder will remove part or all of the female genitals with no anesthesia and then suture the wound with a needle or plant thorn. As much as 15% of girls forced to endure the procedure die from excessive blood loss or the infections that follow. Sembène wants to intensely critique his culture and highlight how some traditions must stop.

Movie Review – Xala

Xala (1975)
Written and directed by Ousmane Sembène

In the mid-15th century, the Portuguese landed on the shores of Senegal and began a centuries-long occupation that included the British, the Dutch, and the French. It would not be until 1958 that Senegal declared its independence and merged with French Sudan to form the Mali Federation. That would not last long, and by 1960, they went back to their individual states. The process of decolonization is not quick & easy. When the colonizers withdraw, there is still tremendous work to do, a lot of which centers around removing the ideologies & ways of doing imposed on the colonized people by their occupiers. Ousmane Sembène is keenly aware of this, and in his film Xala, he produces an angry screed at how Western capitalism is allowed to fester in the systems of the post-colonial African people.

Movie Review – Emitaï

Emitaï (1971)
Written and directed by Ousmane Sembène

To combat the Nazi occupation back home, the Vichy government (the official French State government during WWII) would conscript men from the lands they occupied in West Africa. These men would be shipped into Europe, where they were made to fight in that war. Ousmane Sembène devoted several of his films to this practice. This one focuses on the way the French government would slowly exploit & drain people already living in abject poverty for the sake of the empire. It’s probably Sembène’s most straightforward film, which shows he wanted to be very precise & clear in what he shows us.

Movie Review – Black Girl

Black Girl (1966)
Written and directed by Ousmane Sembène

I had never heard of this film until a few years ago. I didn’t learn the name of its writer-director, Ousmane Sembène (pronounced Oos-man Sem-ben), until last year. I have to ask why that is. Why do I know the names and filmographies of a whole host of directors, but if I were to be asked about African cinema, I would draw a blank? At most, I probably could have come with Neill Blomkamp, a white South African. But no indigenous African filmmakers? I should have known who Sembène was long ago; he’s considered the “father of African cinema” and has been named one of the greatest authors of that continent. The reason I didn’t know this person was because the society I grew up in is profoundly racist, and so someone like Sembène is seen as unworthy of attention.

Movie Review – City Hall

City Hall (2020)
Directed by Frederick Wiseman

At age 94, Frederick Wiseman is still making documentaries. While elements of his style have changed over the decades, and he has very distinctive periods within his filmography, Wiseman has always retained sight of what is important to him in making docs. He believes presenting a moment as true to the heart of what was happening when the camera was rolling is more important than anything else. The process of making movies is inherently biased. There is no way to be objective in the editing bay; each cut is a subjective choice, and we can see that it feels different when someone re-edits a movie. Wiseman does not believe his films are THE final word on anything. They are simply the director and his camera being present in a moment and capturing what happened.

Movie Review – Public Housing

Public Housing (1997)
Directed by Frederick Wiseman

Frederick Wiseman didn’t slow down in the 1980s or 1990s. He continued to put out a film almost every other year about topics as varied as horse racing, a Neiman Marcus department store, Central Park, and a series of docs about people with disabilities. In 1997, he delivered this three-hour exploration of the politics that governed the Ida B. Wells public housing development in Chicago, Illinois. Much like Welfare, Wiseman is trying to capture the voices of the people in power within the institutions as well as the recipients (or people who should be getting, but often don’t get) these services.

Movie Review – Welfare

Welfare (1975)
Directed by Frederick Wiseman

Frederick Wiseman has made his career focusing on institutions, and while he has branched off in later years ever so slightly, the most significant change in his method of filmmaking is going from tight 90-minute movies to large sprawling epics. It makes sense; the topics of his work are vast & challenging to grasp. You need time to let them breathe and for narratives to emerge. Welfare clocks in at nearly three hours long. I argue passionately that not only is this Wiseman’s masterpiece, but it is also one of the greatest documentary films ever made. Within this relatively short time, the audience will experience every stage of life and almost every element that brings drama into our lives.

Patron Pick – The Zone of Interest

This special reward is available to Patreon patrons who pledge at the $10 or $20 monthly levels. Each month, those patrons will pick a film for me to review. If they choose, they also get to include some of their thoughts about the movie. This Pick comes from Matt Harris.

The Zone of Interest (2023)
Written and directed by Jonathan Glazer

A droning echo from deep in the bowels of the underworld is the first thing you hear as the screen remains black. This is a descent into Hell. The music distorts and warps, communicating this mood of decay & rot. It is also a signal that this will not be a film about the spectacle of war or even the direct horrors of the Holocaust. Instead, this will be a story from right on the periphery. The title, The Zone of Interest, was a term Nazis used euphemistically to refer to the complex of over 40 death camps in Auschwitz, Poland. Filmmaker Jonathan Glazer uses his talents to deliver a story about genocide unlike any other I’ve seen. This is a film where the details are withheld, and it is through inference that the true horror emerges.