The Queer Syllabus: Velvet Goldmine by Todd Haynes
In The Queer Syllabus, writers nominate works for a new canon of queer literature.
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Film
Sweet Bird
Every story needs to begin in a place of stasis, a comfortable zero.
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The Queer Syllabus: Chavela by Catherine Gund and Daresha Kyi
In The Queer Syllabus, writers nominate works for a new canon of queer literature.
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The Queer Syllabus: The Watermelon Woman by Cheryl Dunye
In The Queer Syllabus, writers nominate works for a new canon of queer literature.
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Watching Roots in the Age of Trump
…slavery isn’t African-American history, it’s American history.
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The Rumpus Mini-Interview Project #146: Andrew Solomon
“I can tell my story with precautions; others strip away my armor and expose a beating heart.”
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Falling in Love with Eve Harrington
Power structures are not static conditions—they cannot be built to last permanently and disruptions by young ambitious outsiders are inevitable.
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Hannibal Lecter, My Therapist
In the dark, I felt at home in the underground bunker where the hospital stored its violent men.
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You Like That, Baby?: The Myth of Feminine Mystery
“It’s like a damn Rubik’s cube down there!”
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Black Panther and Strong Women
I saw myself on the big screen—the strong black woman that I am, and the stronger black woman I aspire to become.
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Look at How the Bullets Have Missed
I praise everyone I can still touch, their warmth a violent protest against the cold weapons of death.
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The Girl Next Door: Pot Docs and Loss on the California Coast
[A]s with any documentary, every one of our stories eventually becomes a ghost story. On a long enough timeline, that is.
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The Thread: Look What You Made Me Do
Can a person with some agency ever claim victimization, or are agency and victimhood a binary?
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Living Proof: A Review of Wild Wild Country
The story of Rajneeshpuram is told in a series of events and everything within it is true. But it is not real. It does not come alive.
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Strong Island’s Horizon
Whose lives are visible? Whose pain is just? Whose grief is vocal? Such inquiry is not rhetorical.
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The Neoliberal Heart of the 90s Romcom
The personal is political, to the extent that politics itself can be effectively effaced with no detrimental effects.
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Thinking about the Story: A Conversation with Kareem Mortimer
Filmmaker Kareem Mortimer discusses his latest feature, Cargo, his writing process, and why the Bahamas can be “a microcosm for the world.”
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The Rumpus Mini-Interview #118: John Ridley
“It was about showing people taking, or denying, responsibility.”
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The Real Fake News
In 2017, newscaster cameos may be the only fact-fiction crossovers for which people have no difficulty keeping the two concepts apart.
...moreAn Open Letter to George Bailey
“That’s right: George Bailey needs to chill. Don’t @ me.”
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Titanic Turns Twenty in a World That Won’t Talk About It
After twenty years and eleven Oscars and eleventy billion dollars, we still don’t really talk about Titanic.
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You Still Got It: Bar-Hopping with Burt Young
Actor and painter Burt Young talks filmmaking, art, and the years he spent living on a sixty-three-foot yacht.
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The Rumpus Mini-Interview #107: Sissy Spacek
Sissy Spacek still radiates youth and innocence when she enters a room.
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Scars of War: Watching Battle of the Sexes
Until recently, coming out was almost always dangerous—not only to our careers and our relationships but also to our bodies. And so hiding was (and sometimes still is) a necessity.
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The Rumpus Mini-Interview Project #101: The Dardenne Brothers
Aware of The Bechdel Test or not, the Belgian brothers keep churning out movies that pass with flying colors.
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Spaces of Exception vs. Spaces of Redemption: The Films of Ana Lily Amirpour
Diasporic communities live inside a host nation, but they also live with difference.
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Erasing the Girl: Why Don’t We Trust Women to Tell Their Stories of Disordered Eating?
I didn’t want to criticize her, or demand explanations from her. I just wanted to hear her speak.
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Empathy Is Cheap: A Conversation with Brandon Harris
Brandon Harris discusses his memoir Making Rent in Bed-Stuy, gentrification in New York City and Brooklyn, the homogenization of American cities by corporate America, and whiteness of film culture.
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There Is Simply No Time for This: Whose Streets? and Civil Rights Cinema
It is unlikely I will see the US justice system evolve toward an egalitarian ideal in my lifetime. But Whose Streets? does offer a clearly visible North Star.
...moreFetishizing Distress: The Wrong Light and Sex Trafficking
Josie Swantek Heitz’s and Dave Adams’s The Wrong Light, theatrically released in NYC through Cinema Guild on July 14, is disturbing on several levels. First, there’s the story itself. The filmmakers set out to create a portrait of the Children’s Organization of Southeast Asia (COSA), a nonprofit boarding school of sorts founded in 2005 by […]
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