The season ending coup de grâce came unmercifully April 25 in a 116-112 loss to the Atlantic division Boston Celtics – damn them all – in an ignominious 4-0 sweep eliminating the Nets in the first round. My readers are probably wonder what’s next. By Peter Fenoaltea.
In BFF 2021 juried competition program, 71 percent of the films were directed by women, 75 percent by people representing BIPOC or API, and 33 percent by people of the LGBTQIA+ community. Seventy percent of the films were written by women, 70 percent by BIPOC or API, 32 percent by people of the LGBTQIA+ community and 87 percent featured a female lead, 81 percent a BIPOC or API lead, and 30 percent an LGBTQIA+ lead.
Ninety-six percent of these films had a cast and crew that was made up of more than half of people from these same communities.
Director Mary Ann Rotond, who won Best Woman Directed Short at the Poppy Jasper International Film Festival this year, believes that the power of shared humanity, which is the essence of empathy, can overpower the centrifugal forces she believes are at the core of racism and bigotry tearing away at America.
She tells her visually stunning movie short through an encounter of a young woman Black and proud who is hitch hiking and the long-haul trucker, White, who gives her a lift. Once inside the cab of the trucker’s rig, the woman discovers that the truck driver is enamored with the culture and mores represented by the Confederate flag that is a banner inside his rig. And the sparks fly. – Film short review by Abigail Jean.
QUEEN OF THE DESERT is Director Mary Ann Rotondi’s creative endeavor to make a movie commentary about what she believed are the dynamic social and political forces menacing this country, writes the WORD’s Luis De Leon. Rotondi, who won Best Woman Directed Short at the 2022 Poppy Jasper International Film Festival, uses two characters of different gender, ethnicity, personal values as well as social and political mores to express her point of view that the power of people’s shared humanity can ameliorate the centrifugal forces she believes are tearing away at America.
In other words, people living in the United States of America need to empathize more with people who don’t appear to be like them.
This article has been removed August 3, 2022 because the writer refused to follow the guidelines and rules for corroborating and verifying the content for this article by turning in the notebook required for this class.
