Modern Griots Review: Zetwal (Twinkl)

Can poetry be fuel for a spaceship? One man, Robert Saint-Rose, from the Caribbean island of Martinique believed so. The inspiring documentary film, Zetwal, which means “stars,” or “twinkl” from the film, in creole, follows the journey of the Caribbean folk hero who builds a spaceship in 1974 on a mission to be the first […]

Otherworldly Videos: Oji and The Ascension Team

I found out about Oji (Oji El) and The Ascension team on Some Otha Ship’s (Georgia Anne Muldrow and Declaime) website. Oji El wrote, scored and animated the music and videos, which are filled with a lot of symbolism and are quite trippy. You can listen to their latest album, Mental Treasure Hunt, here. “The Gift […]

Otherworldly Videos: The Surreality of Survival

Photographer and filmmaker Alan Spearman of The Commercial Appeal, has two short films on his website about life in Memphis. The first is “As I Am,” which features Chris Dean and his community’s stories of survival amidst poverty in Memphis, and the second, “April,” of a girl named Faith and a woman named Hattie Mae […]

Otherwordly Videos: The All-Seeing Eye of Authority

Living in a world where there is an increasing usage of drones, it forces you to wonder how machines are and will be used to track, arrest and even kill people here and abroad, and the ethics behind using them. Below are two sci-fi films that face these concerns: The Raven – Chris Black possesses […]

A Jacksons’ Halloween…..

After Hurricane Sandy, I am treating myself and everyone to some music from the Jacksons family for Halloween. When we think of Halloween and scary music videos, the first thought may be Michael Jackson’s “Thriller,” but the Jacksons have dabbled into a few other scary videos. By the way, read two of my Frankenstein posts […]

Otherworldly Videos: Romi Anauel

Romi Anauel and The Soldiers of Ra – “Take a Moment” Mirror-image merging and superimposed images make for one trippy video.

Otherworldly Videos: Afrogalactic Postcards

This series is from National Black Programming Consortium and features actor Alem Sapp: This work is a series of video podcasts in which the receiver ‘intercepts’ 60 second messages from ‘travelers’ either trying to find their way home or trying to run as far away as they can, but always hoping to maintain a connection […]

Otherworldly Videos: Zincgraff

Written and directed by Cameroon-born, San Francisco based filmmaker Lino Brown, Zincgraff is the story of a reclusive painter who holds onto a lost love through his memories and hallucinations in order to finish a portrait of her. Brown described the film as “an internal exploration of a relationship and the timeline of dissolution & empathy, […]

Modern Griots Reviews: Middle of Nowhere

The United States has the largest incarcerated population in the world, yet it is easy to forget about prisoners and their lives before and outside of prison. We usually do not think about these lives that our made invisible to us, hidden away in cells, and how prison steals possible futures of them and their […]

The My-Stery: The Alien Perspective

Despite this hilarious shallowness of this trailer, The Brother From Another Planet actually presented a number of deep ideas. A few days ago, I watched it, and some of the obvious themes were immigration (“the brother” crash lands on Ellis Island), migration, fugitivity (he is on the run from two white alien bounty hunters and […]