The desecration of 5 Pointz came suddenly one night in 2013. Paid men, at the behest of a real estate developer, painted over the graffitied murals that adorned the walls of this Queens complex. A gross, white layer of gunk was slathered on top of the colorful tapestry of aerosol paint that had occupied the […]
I’ve often heard that the mastery of editing a film is measured by how unnoticeable the edits are. If you get from one place to another–from one character to another, from the beginning to the end of a story without your immersion being interrupted– that’s masterful. I think that also applies to the skill of […]
Kangmin Kim invites us into the vicarious dreams of his mother in “KKUM.” In this stop-motion animated experimental memoir, Kim illustrates his mother’s prophetic visions in monochromatic styrofoam, cotton, and light. These elements are re-contextualized in a way that allows Kim to make sense of uncanny changes in his life. Material manifestations of fire, insects, […]
Can we be friends with our circumstances? This is the question that Jason Park asks us in their short film, “BJ’s Mobile Gift Shop.” Byung Jun Lee, or BJ for short (played by Johnnyboy Tellem), is in the middle of transitioning away from a “career” selling a variety of goods to Chicagoans that are “moving […]
Have you ever boiled all the water away from a pot? What begins as an innocuous simmer suddenly drains all the liquid away until you’re just burning the pot, rendering it unusable. Watching See You Then at this year’s SXSW felt like that. See You Then, directed by Japanese American filmmaker Mari Walker, is a […]