Tag: Video

Deep Blue She

A music video by Tanuja Desai Hidier, featuring:

ANOUSHKA SHANKAR on Sitar

JON FADDIS on Trumpet

AMITA SWADHIN on Testimony

VALARIE KAUR on Watch Night Service

TANUJA DESAI HIDIER on Vox

& The We

A note from Tanuja: Happy Women’s History Month—Every Month!

The “Deep Blue She” music video-remix PSA is a grassroots/DIY/collective project featuring 100+ activist artists, musicians and writers, mostly women of color. The video was filmed over the course of a year, mostly on cellphones, by us, all over the world, the idea being that we choose the frame, the angle, the light. We tell our stories ourselves.

Please join the #mergrrrlmovement and dive in. We’re hoping to get eyes and ears on this, and concrete help to the causes: Proceeds from sales of the remix on Bandcamp go to rotating charities—pick your price—beginning with the Mahendra Singh Foundation (founder, activist and acid attack survivor MoniCa Singh is in the video, too).

We’re open to what the next charity to receive funds will be. If this video can be a useful tool for you, please email me at ABCreativeD@ThisIsTanuja.com.

Thank you,
Tanuja

Those involved in the production’s creation include:

  • Anoushka Shankar (six-time Grammy nominated sitar player/composer)
  • Elizabeth Acevedo (writer/Poetry Slam Champion)
  • Priyanka Bose (activist/actor from the film Lion)
  • Reshma Gajjar (artist/actor/dancer; The Girl in the Yellow Dress La La Land)
  • Shenaz Treasury (actor/TV host/writer/travel vlogger Travel With Shenaz; in The Big Sick)
  • Fawzia Mirza (actor/writer/producer/creator; cowrote, produced, stars in Signature Move with Shabana Azmi)
  • Abhijeet Rane (model/drag queen/artist/activist)
  • Leslee Udwin (filmmaker/human rights activist; director of India’s Daughter)
  • Ivy Meeropol (documentary filmmaker; Indian Point, The Hill, Heir to an Execution)
  • Kayhan Irani (storyteller/community engagement strategist/ 2016 White House Champion of Change)
  • MoniCa Singh (influencer/international philanthropist and president and founder of The Mahendra Singh Foundation to aid girls/women who, like her, are acid attack survivors/ have survived such kinds of trauma)
  • Mercedes Terrance (an Akwesasne Mohawk member of The Rolling Resistance)
  • Smriti Mundhra (filmmaker; Best Director with Sarita Khurana at the Tribeca Film Fest for their doc Suitable Girl!)

And award-winning writers Marina Budhos, Gemma Weekes, Kat Beyer, Uma Krishnaswami, Elizabeth Acevedo, Cynthia Leitich-Smith, Paula Yoo, Sharbari Ahmed, Mitali Desai, Eliot Schrefer, Mira Kamdar, Nico Medina, Billy Merrell sand Bill Konigsberg.

Who Will Kneel for You: Artists Speak Out

From The Root

Anna Deavere Smith and a chorus of artists recite the poem “To Kneel,” by Kathy Engel, in support of 2018 NFL protests and the right to dissent, and against racist police violence.

 

 

 

 

 

Visit The Root – Black news, opinions, politics and culture

Cartoon credit:  Drew Sheneman, Newark Star-Ledger (Newark, N.J.), via a Creative Commons license.

Trigger Warning: An Exorcism for Las Vegas

A performance poem by Alexander McCoy

Performed by Alexander McCoy

Cinematography and editing by Adam Jiang

Alexander McCoy is three years out of Clark University where he earned a BFA in theater, and where he got his start as a writer and slam poetry performer. He has since moved to Boston where he makes a living, here and there, as a teacher or—more often than not—a server in some diner or other. Mostly, he writes about his complicated relationship with his Cuban heritage, or else the view from his porch.

Let’s End Ageism

By Ashton Applewhite

Ageism is discrimination and stereotyping on the basis of age. We experience it anytime someone assumes we’re too old for something, instead of finding out who we are and what we’re capable of, or too young. Ageism cuts both ways. All -isms are socially constructed ideas—racism, sexism, homophobia—and that means we make them up, and they can change over time.

We are all worried about some aspect of getting older—running out of money, getting sick, ending up alone—and those fears are legitimate and real. But what never dawns on most of us is that the experience of reaching old age can be better or worse depending on the culture in which it takes place. It is not having a vagina that makes life harder for women. It’s sexism. It’s not loving a man that makes life harder for gay guys. It’s homophobia. And it is not the passage of time that makes getting older so much harder than it has to be. It is ageism. …

 

Ashton Applewhite is the author of This Chair Rocks: A Manifesto Against Ageism and is the voice of the Yo, Is This Ageist? blog. She is also the author of Cutting Loose: Why Women Who End Their Marriages Do So Well and was a clue on Jeopardy! as the author of the mega bestseller series, Truly Tasteless Jokes. (Who is Blanche Knott?)

Photo credit: Ethan Prater via a Creative Commons license.

40 Strangers 50 Questions

From Brave New Films

On Wednesday, May 24 at 6:30 PM, 40 strangers entered a small photography studio near downtown Los Angeles. On the floor, they found strips of white tape laid out in large boxes. In a few moments, a member of the Brave New Films production team would stand in front of a blue wall facing the 40 strangers and what happened next really surprised us all.

 

Learn more about Brave New Films.

84 Lumber Super Bowl ad: The uncensored film

From the family-owned 84 Lumber Company

The original 84 Lumber Super Bowl advertisement created a stir: The content was deemed too controversial by Fox, which banned it from broadcast. An edited version was cut for the game, and The Washington Post published a story about it—because the controversy was reportedly due to the depiction of Donald Trump’s proposed border wall.

Then the company’s CEO declared herself a Trump supporter and said the ad was in keeping with Trump’s immigration stance.

In this full version of the film, not quite six minutes long and with the offending footage, you see a mother and daughter, struggling to reach the United States, not to be stopped by a wall.

So, does the film celebrate determination and legal entry to the United States or does it advocate for illegal immigration?

 

Rae Rose Cancels an Appointment

By Rae Rose

Artist’s statement

I am as inconsistent as my sleep.

For people with bipolar disorder, sleep is often an ongoing battle, a ludicrous arrangement, a total crapshoot, and sometimes, ridiculous. More often, I’m crying. More often, I’m ashamed. Some days, I’m a total badass. Some days, I fee like I can’t show up to life.

Simple things become impossible. A lack of sleep affects our ability to work, which affects our ability to obtain health care, which affects our sleep …

Those living with disabilities, as well as friends of disabled people, neighbors/one night stands/Facebook pals/partiers/grocery clerks/loved ones/etc., should be wary of the changing of the guards.

We have to show up for each other.

Rae Rose’s most recent work appears in Jennifer Bartlett’s Hineni Magazine. She is Writers Resist’s poetry editor. You can visit her website at Yours Truly, Rae Rose.

Music is by Eliza Rickman.