Brooklyn College prepares students for real careers in the motion picture industry.<\/em><\/p>\n RAMON \u2013 Director Jeniffer Hernandez) <\/p>\n RAMON<\/strong> Marvelously bittersweet. Ramon clowns to make kids smile and be suffused in happiness at parties and celebrations. The story telling is exquisite. It says mountains about the Dominican experience in America.<\/a> Scenes segue to Ramon working in a Queens deli to make $$$ for his family then to treasured moments with his kids in Santa Domingo \u2013 via the ubiquitous cellphone \u2013 then back to the deli and then to his gigs. They gnaw subliminally at one’s heart: His kids close yet so far away.<\/p>\n Ramon putting on his clown face \u2013 prepping for the parties and events \u2013 was meticulously done and moving. He puts on a face to entertain kids just as he puts on a face for his kids so that they don’t know how heavy his heart without them. Wow! Hernandez packs a lot in the short one second under 7 minutes. Makes one wonder what else she has in store for the future.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n AGAINST THE CURRENT<\/strong> Bravo Director Albert Negrete. A lot springing from his cinematic imagination. To spice up the political conversation?<\/em> Hmmm. Five-hundred-thousand Big Apple residents \u2013 many living in in Staten Island \u2013 cast ballots for Trump in 2016. Aspiring torch bearing Dion, in Trumpian bling regalia, goes where this reviewer imagines few Trumpian acolytes would dare to tread without a security escort, such as for a soakboxing in Washington Square Park, a bastion for soapboxing liberalness.<\/p>\n There are jarring scenes of Dion, a supporter of a racist-sexist-homophobic-fascistic misanthropic U.S. President, standing his ground and trying to reason with anti-Trump supporters whose vituperative comments and menacing are ferocious. Yet, Negrete’s AGAINST THE CURRENT is nonjudgemental of this political supporter of a racist-sexist-homophobic-fascist misanthrope who deserves the withering enmity. But does Dion?<\/p>\n Nevertheless, the Trump acolyte is also a kayaker and he replenishes his soul by taking to the Manhattan’s East River. Bravo Director Negrete, you may be a film student now but the motion picture industry must be on high alert.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n BACK HOME<\/strong> The family is the most violent institution in society, except for police or the military in time of war,<\/i> Drs. Murray Straus and Richard J. Gelles wrote in Behind Closed Doors: Violence in the American Family. Director Motohashi’s cinematic derring-do to open up the secret cache about her painful childhood caused by her mother is clinically and cinematically impressive. Note: Though physical violence was not the source of the trauma, emotional trauma is just as lethal, nevertheless.<\/p>\n BACK HOME opens with Motohashi arriving to the apartment of her mom’s Tokyo apartment in a highrise building. She lugs a suitcase as she is facing the camera. The rift has been for five years. The film ends with her walking out of her mom’s apartment, back to the camera, and heading to the airport. In between is a mother-daughter interaction fueled by a mother’s decision to force her daughter out of the home when she was young. It was either the daughter or the father and mom chose her husband. Was the conflict resolved? You have to see this documentary that flows like a narrative film. Resolved or not resolved, Haruka Motoashi does what millions of us do: Try to \u00a0 move on!<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n MY FAMILY REUNION<\/strong> This nostalgic story telling is compelling. Fuller review in the works.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n DEAR FRIEND CHINATOWN<\/strong> The synopsis says it all. Has considerable depth and perception that results in more than a tourist view of Chinatown. See this film. Those of us who visit Chinatown frequently will see it in a new way.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n THE BANNED<\/strong> Presidential Executive Order 13769, January 27, 2017, Titled, Protecting the Nation from Foreign Terrorist Entry into the United States,<\/em> is also known as the Muslim Ban or Travel Ban. Iniquitous as it was meant to be by a U.S. President who supports white nationalism and all forms of bigotry and racism, especially directed nefariously at Muslims and Muslim Americans, it was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court. Thousands and thousands were impacted. Director Ali Reza Khoshkjan’s delving is a your-eyes-will-never-leave-the-screen action-adventure about lives effected by evil incarnate.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n TO THE SEA<\/strong> <\/p>\n <\/p>\n MEAT HOOK<\/strong> <\/p>\n <\/p>\n YOU FOUND A HOME<\/strong> \u201cSometimes you girls act like you don\u2019t want it when you really do,\u201d a maintenance worker told Christine DeLisser. They were in the elevator at the Residence Hall (RHBC). Just the two of them. One was a man abusing his power. The other? A young student. He started to gyrate toward her until she put out her hand and pointed to the camera. \u201cOh, them shits don\u2019t work,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n A zinger of a documentary that reveals the institutionalized sleaze and moral turpitude that can exist at a public institution of higher education and that can put students a risk. YOU FOUND A HOME snarls, growls and roars. The seeds of a feature length motion picture?<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Brooklyn College Film Department<\/a><\/p>\nThe Latest Talent<\/h3>\n
\nAGAINST THE CURRENT \u2013 Director Albert Negrete
\nBACK HOME \u2013 Director Haruka Motohashi
\nMY FAMILY REUNION \u2013 Director Elmo King
\nDEAR FRIEND CHINATOWN \u2013 Director Tian Leng
\nTHE BANNED \u2013 Ali Reza Khoshkjan
\nTO THE SEA \u2013 Director Vicky Lee, Henry O’Reilly
\nMEAT HOOK \u2013 Director Maria de la Guardia
\nYOU FOUND A HOME \u2013 Director Chris Omar<\/p>\n
\nDirector: Jeniffer Hernandez
\nSynopsis: Dominican Republic immigrant Ramon Pina works a Queens deli counter during the weekdays to make $$$ to send to his wife and kids back on Hispania, and freelances as a clown on the weekends to make kids smile.
\nTRT: 06:59<\/p>\n
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\nDirector: Albert Negrete
\nSynopsis: Dion walks around New York City with a flag campaigning for Donald Trump to spice up the political conversation.
\nTRT: 10:45<\/p>\n
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\nDirector: Haruka Motohashi
\nSynopsis: An autobiographical documentary about the filmmaker\u2019s journey to reconcile the rift between her and her estranged mother, who is about to have a hip operation in Tokyo. Her visit relives past trauma.
\nTRT: 12:49<\/p>\n
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\nDirector: Elmo King
\nSynopsis: After 16 years, the filmmaker brings his family back together in the only way possible.
\nTRT: 11.11<\/p>\n
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\nDirector: Tian Leng
\nSynopsis: A poetic exploration of the space and time in Manhattan’s Chinatown. In the form of a postcard to a close friend, DEAR FRIEND CHINATOWN documents daily life and sees culture, community, and religion through a nostalgic lens.
\nTRT: 5:22<\/p>\n
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\nDirector: Ali Reza Khoshkjan
\nSynopsis: The Banned delves into the lives of Iranian-Americans affected by the travel ban.
\nTRT: 13:45<\/p>\n
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\nDirectors: Vicky Lee & Henry O’Reilly
\nSynopsis: A glimpse of the unique quality of the RNLI Lifeboat Station and it\u2019s volunteers in Moelfre, a Welsh town.
\nTRT: 5:00
\nDirectors Vicky Lee’s & Henry O’Reilly’s glimpse is more than a glimpse. Rather it’s a cinematic picture post card of the Royal National Lifeboat Institution that claims to be “the largest charity that saves lives at sea around the coasts of the United Kingdom, the Republic of Ireland, the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man as well as on some inland waterways.”<\/p>\n
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\nDirector: Maria de la Guardia
\nSynopsis: At a butcher shop in Brooklyn, workers carve, saw and hack at half-pigs and slabs of meat. MEAT HOOK sensorially examines the skill, violence and surprising beauty of whole-animal meat processing.
\nTRT: 9:06
\nBeauty in the butchering and dismembering of flesh and bone? You bet. So well done artistically providing a behind-the-scenes look of an ecological view of man-woman & beast & abattoir that there is no need for a vegan\/vegetarian disclaimer at the start of the film. That’s this reviewer’s tongue-in-cheek about this five-star flick.<\/p>\n
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\nDirector: Chris Omar
\nSynopsis: In the midst of the #MeToo movement, a Brooklyn College student makes sure her voice is heard by the school administration after being sexually harassed by an employee of the privately owned, Residence Hall @ Brooklyn College.
\nTRT: 15:44
\nDirector Chris Omar accentuates the voice of intrepid student Christine DeLisser, raising it to a clarion call. How this bravura filmmaking came about about is reported in an article by journalist Zainab Iqbal, writing for the Brooklyn College newspaper The Excelsior in an October 29, 2019 article with the headline, “Brooklyn College Filmmaker Documents the Story of Christine DeLisser Who Was Sexually Assaulted at the Residence Hall.”<\/a> Iqbal’s lead paragraph is enough to catalyze paroxysms of rage.<\/p>\n
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