Monday, January 4, 2016

Activist Cinema 2015 Part 2

We finish up our year end wrap up of Activist Cinema from 2015 with a brief discussion of some prominent LGBTQ films (The Danish Girl, Stonewall, Freeheld, Carol and About Ray) and how they were mostly not that good...but that is okay.  We also compare the narrative device used in the film Stonewall with the exact same device used in the film Suffragette and how the critics hated it in one film, but loved it in another.  There were also two notable films, one produced independently (99 Homes) and one produced by Hollywood (The Big Short), that tackle the issue of the housing market collapse of 2008.  Then, we move onto the Activist Film of 2015, Chi-Raq.  Spike Lee has created another brilliant film (see also: Bamboozled) that captures the zeitgeist of the times in a way that few filmmakers working today are capable of doing.  [Click to Listen]