The BlackStar Film Festival consistently resists forces that try to define culture in majoritarian terms.
Bedatri D. Choudhury
Bedatri studied Literature and Cinema in New Delhi and New York, and loves writing on gender, popular culture, films, and most other things. She lives in New York, where she eats cake, binge watches reruns of old TV shows, and makes notes about strangers she meets on the subway. You can give her a holler on Twitter @Bedatri.
Posted inFilm
Exposing Rodrigo Duterte’s War on the Free Press
Director Ramona Diaz and journalist Maria Ressa discuss their struggles to make A Thousand Cuts, a film about the autocratic president of the Philippines.
Posted inFilm
Reclaiming the Legend of Bruce Lee
The new ESPN documentary Be Water seeks to both reassert Lee’s legacy and humanize him.
Posted inBooks
A Queer, South Asian Utopia Comes to Life in This Graphic Novel
Bishakh Som’s Apsara Engine imagines what happens when femmes, as Donna Haraway writes, “make kin, not babies.”
Posted inArt
The Body Is Both Vulnerable and Powerful for One of India’s Most Prominent Printmakers
The Soul (Un)Gendered: Anupam Sud, A Retrospective at DAG gallery is the first retrospective of Sud’s work in the USA, and is good introduction to her intense and existentialist art.
Posted inFilm
Approaches to Feminism by Way of Shirley Jackson and a Black Beauty Pageant
At Sundance, Shirley and Miss Juneteenth explored ways women claim control of their own narratives.
Posted inFilm
At Sundance, Examining the Relationships Between People and Their Governments
Documentaries at the festival looked at ordinary people in Cuba, journalists in the Philippines, and lawyers for the ACLU.
Posted inFilm
Kahlil Joseph Imagines a News Channel Foregrounded in Black Excellence
With BLKNWS, Joseph combats the racist and one-dimensional gaze of the news media.
Posted inFilm
The Bittersweet Nostalgia of Watching Basquiat in Downtown 81
A time capsule that holds the legendary artist in immortal youth, the cult classic also preserves a certain New York, which has now changed beyond recognition.
Posted inFilm
A Movie Envisions the Trial that Eric Garner Never Had
Roee Messinger’s American Trial: The Eric Garner Story envisages a future that was denied to Eric Garner and his family, thanks to the extremely racist and flawed legal system in the United States.
Posted inFilm
Agnès Varda Says Goodbye to Life and Art In Her Poignant Final Film
In Varda by Agnès, the revered director makes her own cinematic eulogy.
Posted inFilm
An Unearthed Cinematic Time Capsule of New York Hustle and Bustle
Film poet Manfred Kirchheimer shows off beautiful restored footage he shot in NYC from 1958 to 1960 in Free Time.