Patricia R. Zimmermann opens her book “States of Emergency: Documentaries, Wars, Democracies” (2000) with a reality-check: “We are poised on a crumbling, frightening precipice as we edge into the enigmatic morphing media landscapes of the twenty-first century. Whether...
Commentary
Anyone But Trump: Hoping, Fighting, and Voting Together
Before I start, let me say the world is messy right now. It is messy to think. It is messy to write. But I continue in defiance, with hope for our liberation. It is July 4. What better time to wonder about the MAGA (Make America Great Again) movement that openly...
An Anticolonial Fight in the U.S. Heartland? No, But…
We focus on the fights. The left explodes in anger when someone from the right insults gender diversity or fails to criticize a racist statement. Understandably. The right stews in rage as the left scoffs at conservatives, speaking as if all are racist and homophobic....
For Patty Zimmermann, with Revolutionary Love
These words were written for a late-April weekend memorializing Patty Zimmermann, who was Editor-at-Large for The Edge, Director of the Finger Lakes Environmental Film Festival, Professor of Screen Studies at Ithaca College, and a fierce friend and ally. ...
Finding My Way to Max Tohline’s ‘A Supercut of Supercuts’
We often discover new media fascinations in roundabout ways. In February of 2022, when filmmaker J.P. Sniadecki emailed me to ask if I’d seen Chloé Galibert-Laîné’s “Forensickness” (2022), I had only the vaguest sense of what had come to be called the “video essay.” I...
The Heritage of Language: Antisemitism and Islamophobia are Western Words
As the world watches the dystopian horror movie in Gaza unfolding on social and traditional media, U.S. news networks are giving more attention this week to the Hollywood awards season. As South Africa makes the case against Israel’s genocide at the International...
Elitism and the Rest of Us as the New Semester Begins
This week, most college and university campuses will open across the country. The ghastly war in Gaza continues and the U.S. has become more involved as it bombs Yemen. So, I am thinking about how unsettled the surround is as higher education institutions begin a new...
War Rape and the Question of Hamas
Israeli Zionist women have been speaking out these last few days to bring attention to the horrific rape of Jewish women, and the lack of outcry of feminists, for them, to this plight. They demand an indictment of Hamas and its sexual treachery towards women on...
The 10 Freeway Has Been Reopened but L.A.’s Transit Problem Remains
During the early hours of November 11, a fire erupted in a storage yard underneath the I-10 freeway near downtown Los Angeles, structurally compromising a large section of the road and resulting in, what was at the time, claimed to be an indefinite closure of the...
From My Body to Yours, and Gaza to the World
A Meditation on Death, Killing, and Possibility I knew my body was healing from the surgery when I found myself ready to engage with the world and posted on Facebook: I am always anti-zionist. And never an antisemite. And always an anti-racist feminist against...