I watched Marco Berger's rom-com back in 2025. It had horrible subtitling, something that is not usually fatal to Berger films. Unfortunately, as I wrote in my first review, much of this film eschews the silence that characterizes Berger's cinematic eye. A good translation is necessary to understand most of this film's plot.

While I'm waiting impatiently for a good stream of Perro Perro to come, I managed to get ahold of a better translation of Los Amantes Astronautas while sailing the high seas. The experience of watching the show with good subtitles is like night and day. Aspects of the film that I found entirely unwatchable now served a narrative purpose. I finally could deduce the movie's three acts.

Plan B (2009) 

Ariana Reines | A Sand Book 

photo from june in le marais, paris

Taekwondo (2016) 

Ingeborg Bachmann | Undine Goes | The Thirtieth Year 

Alice Notley | When You Arrived | Eurynome’s Sandals 

Ingeborg Bachmann | Undine Goes | The Thirtieth Year

David Wojnarowicz | Close to the Knives 

Taekwondo (2016)

The Faggots & Their Friends Between Revolutions | text by Larry Mitchell drawings by Ned Asta

A surprising number of important realizations could be made if we develop the habit of talking about gender dynamics even – perhaps especially – in the context of all-male or mostly-male groups.

How does it affect productivity, public image, collaboration, negotiating, client acquisition, etc. to have any group of people involved be entirely men? What effects does this drastic gender imbalance cause in its environment?

LET’S TALK ABOUT GENDER AND MEN, PEOPLE. Gender is not an exclusively female domain.

Me, interviewing the director of basically any film ever: “So let’s talk about the extreme gender imbalance in the casting of this film. What was the thinking behind that? Was there a particular statement you were trying to make, a satirical observation on the politics of society, perhaps? That kind of came out of left field, when we watched the film and all the parts but one were men. Can you tell us a little about the background of that?”

Director: “Um… I didn’t actually consciously think that much abou–” Me, interrupting: “Come now, don’t be modest! That was a fascinating artistic decision! The drastic disparity between the number of men and the number of women in the film makes it clear to even the most casual viewer that gender is a central theme in this story. Can we delve into that a little bit further?” Director: “…”

This would be a fun tack to take in regard to race, too.

I work in a decent sized, local, indie bookstore. It’s a great job 99% of the time and a lot of our customers are pretty neat people. Any who, middle of the day this little old lady comes up. She’s lovably kooky. She effuses how much she loves the store and how she wishes she could spend more time in it but her husband is waiting in the car (OH! I BETTER BUY HIM SOME CHOCOLATE!), she piles a bunch of art supplies on the counter and then stops and tells me how my bangs are beautiful and remind her of the ocean (“Wooooosh” she says, making a wave gesture with her hand)

Ok. I think to myself. Awesomely happy, weird little old ladies are my favorite kind of customer. They’re thrilled about everything and they’re comfortably bananas. I can have a good time with this one. So we chat and it’s nice.

Then this kid, who’s been up my counter a few times to gather his school textbooks, comes up in line behind her (we’re connected to a major university in the city so we have a lot of harried students pass through). She turns around to him and, out of nowhere, demands that he put his textbooks on the counter. He’s confused but she explains that she’s going to buy his textbooks.

He goes sheetrock white. He refuses and adamantly insists that she can’t do that. It’s like, $400 worth of textbooks. She, this tiny old woman, bodily takes them out of her hands, throws them on the counter and turns to me with a intense stare and tells me to put them on her bill. The kid at this point is practically in tears. He’s confused and shocked and grateful. Then she turns to him and says “you need chocolate.” She starts grabbing handfuls of chocolates and putting them in her pile.

He keeps asking her “why are you doing this?” She responds “Do you like Harry Potter?“ and throws a copy of the new Cursed Child on the pile too.

Finally she’s done and I ring her up for a crazy amount of money. She pays and asks me to please give the kid a few bags for his stuff. While I’m bagging up her merchandise the kid hugs her. We’re both telling her how amazing she is and what an awesome thing she’s done. She turns to both of us and says probably one of the most profound, unscripted things I’ve ever had someone say:

“It’s important to be kind. You can’t know all the times that you’ve hurt people in tiny, significant ways. It’s easy to be cruel without meaning to be. There’s nothing you can do about that. But you can choose to be kind. Be kind.”

The kid thanks her again and leaves. I tell her again how awesome she is. She’s staring out the door after him and says to me: “My son is a homeless meth addict. I don’t know what I did. I see that boy and I see the man my son could have been if someone had chosen to be kind to him at just the right time.”

I’ve bagged up all her stuff and at this point am super awkward and feel like I should say something but I don’t know what. Then she turns to me and says: I wish I could have bangs like that but my darn hair is just too curly.“ And leaves.

where’s our steamy 60s drama?

where’s our 30s Harlem Renaissance coming of age flick?

where’s our Victorian steampunk sci-fi adventure?

sula by toni morisson is a steamy psychological coming of age drama i’m pretty sure taking place in the 60′s or 50′s, about two black girls in a predominately black town in Ohio, whose lives go in different but parallel directions after sharing a childhood trauma. 

mumbo jumbo is harlem renaissance era post-modern comedy about hougan detective searching for a mysterious suppressed african text, and battling the forces of white supremacy in a conspiracy to undermine black culture going back thousands of years. 

yellow-back radio broke down is a western written like a radio-show about a black cowboy named the lupe garoo kid, and a clear influence on blazing saddles that would come years later.

perdido street station’s main character is a overweight black scientist, living in a Dickensian city of magical steam punk sci fi adventure and multiple sentient races, who is involved in a secret and illegal inter-species relationship with a beetle-headed artist, and on the verge of a breakthrough in unifying magic and science. 

and pym (retro sci-fi/parody/adventure) and zone one (zombie survival horror) are great genre stories, but both are in modern era. this is also excluding afro-futurist  stuff. 

in film there’s 

yeelen - set in ancient africa, about a young man with magic powers on a quest to find his evil sorcerer father. the first real fantasy film in african cinema. black writer, director, and cast. 

daughters of the dust- set in a isolated black community living off the american coast over three generations. the first feature film directed by a black women. black writer, director, and cast. 

harlem nights- harlem renaissance era crime comedy starring three generations of comedy genius. black writer, director, and cast. 

hoodlum- underrated gangster film about black gangsters in harlem. black director and cast

ganja and hess- black vampire art film set in the 70s. black writer, director, and cast. 

chameleon street-  based on a true story about black con man in the 80s who was able to successfully impersonate lawyers, doctors, and professors, spielberg’s “catch me if you can” is essentially white washed version of the same idea. black writer, director, and cast. 

the killer of sheep- neo-realist coming of age film about black lives in 70′s Watts, made originally as a student film thesis. black writer, director, and cast. 

belle is period peace from a black film-maker, but predominately white cast, while beasts of the southern wild, attack the block, the people under the stairs, def by temptation, vampire in brooklyn, and after earth are sci-fi/fantasy/horror films with predominately black casts but not period pieces. Medicine for Melancholy, An Oversimplification Of Her Beauty, and Top Five are conversation driven romantic comedies with black, casts, writers, and directors. 90′s era set coming of age in the wood, the brothers, love and basketball, and upcoming dope.  

i think nearly all other black films fall under Spike Lee, Tyler Perry, 70′s exploitation films, dance movies, 90′s hood films, civil rights & slavery films, musician biopics, African cinema, and pre-Hollywood Race Films, but I might have missed some that don’t fall into these. 

Sweet deal! It’s time to #GoVote! 

Art by Theresa Lie.

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