The Supplicant Undertaker
Is it too much to ask: a girl to want her father to keep his feet firmly in the soil of the living?
...more
Film
Toil and Trouble
Feet dangle in the foreground, suspended in space by distance and gravity.
...more
The Rumpus Poetry Book Club Chat with Sally Wen Mao
Sally Wen Mao discusses her new collection, OCULUS.
...more
The Thread: Outside the Gaze
This is the story I needed as a young girl; this is the story we all need.
...more
The Queer Syllabus: Velvet Goldmine by Todd Haynes
In The Queer Syllabus, writers nominate works for a new canon of queer literature.
...more
Sweet Bird
Every story needs to begin in a place of stasis, a comfortable zero.
...more
The Queer Syllabus: Chavela by Catherine Gund and Daresha Kyi
In The Queer Syllabus, writers nominate works for a new canon of queer literature.
...more
The Queer Syllabus: The Watermelon Woman by Cheryl Dunye
In The Queer Syllabus, writers nominate works for a new canon of queer literature.
...more
Watching Roots in the Age of Trump
…slavery isn’t African-American history, it’s American history.
...more
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.”
...more
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.
...more
Hannibal Lecter, My Therapist
In the dark, I felt at home in the underground bunker where the hospital stored its violent men.
...more
You Like That, Baby?: The Myth of Feminine Mystery
“It’s like a damn Rubik’s cube down there!”
...more
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.
...more
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.
...more
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.
...more
The Thread: Look What You Made Me Do
Can a person with some agency ever claim victimization, or are agency and victimhood a binary?
...more
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.
...more
Strong Island’s Horizon
Whose lives are visible? Whose pain is just? Whose grief is vocal? Such inquiry is not rhetorical.
...more
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.
...more
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.”
...more
The Rumpus Mini-Interview #118: John Ridley
“It was about showing people taking, or denying, responsibility.”
...more
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.”
...more
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.
...more
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.
...more
The Rumpus Mini-Interview #107: Sissy Spacek
Sissy Spacek still radiates youth and innocence when she enters a room.
...more
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.
...more
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.
...more
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.
...more