#recommended viewing

[simpledontmeanpeachy]

Eulogy. Good grief. This episode of Black Mirror is so guttingly bittersweet. It's such an excellent exploration of how what we tell ourselves about our memories alters them, how avoidance contributes to the crystallization of falsehoods, and how daring to turn toward painful things can help us remember more fully and, in turn, understand our past and ourselves better and live in a fuller version of reality.

[the-cimmerians]

La'Ron Readus' excellent video essay, highly recommended! Summary:

The Black Reclamation of the Body Snatchers || Jordan Peele’s Get Out is a great addition to the horror genre surrounding body snatchers, because it highlights body snatchers' roots to whiteness instead of the anti-communist propaganda that the 1956 film “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” tried to say it originally stood for. So I explain how body snatcher horror better reflects the evolution of whiteness to Americanization, how it uses racism and respectability politics to claim the bodies and cultures of black people and other people of color, and how Get Out is a better reflection of the loss of individualism because of that fact.

[modernmonkeymind]

[waste-it-on-something-useful]

The perfect film to precede The White Reindeer (Erik Blomberg, 1952), available on MUBI, is Jean Epstein’s short released five years prior, Le Tempestaire (1947), which is still free to see in a stunning restoration on the Cinémathèque française’s online platform Henri.

Both black-and-white films center on a young woman who, in the absence of her fiancé / husband, hopes to find comfort in some form by seeking the help of a local tempest / shaman channeling (or claiming to channel) the old gods. In awe of nature's potential power, these women are drawn to its beauty yet horrified by its mysterious force. Their stories, based on pre-Christian traditional beliefs and told with little dialogue, become cautionary tales. There’s an underlying current of a search for passion and freedom, through the storm and the hunt, and consequently a loss of innocence. It's lyrical cinema at its finest. Two profound poems of sea and snow.

Screenshots: Mirjami Kuosmanen in The White Reindeer (left) and unknown actress in Le Tempestaire (right)

[cowboyjen68]

Another random suggestion of something to watch, haha. The youtuber Kaz Rowe recently uploaded a video "exploring the queer history of the old west"!

I booked marked it. I am always interested in, specifically women of the west, but our LGBT history as it relates to the "wild west". I always take "she was a lesbian" with a grain of salt. Because the fact is.. women like Calamity Jane gets called a lesbian all the time but she was most certainly straight, yet shrugged off societal expectations to live as she wanted to.. smoking, drinking, riding and shooting. A very lesbian thing to do LOL

Stories like that of Little Jo and Cattle Annie and her sidekick "Little Britches" amazed me as a young girl and still do to this day. Most likely we will never be sure if they were lesbian or bi, but their stories and women doing their own thing in a world that was rough and even more oppressive for women than now will always inspire me. Plus their clothing choices were spot on to take on a world that didn't want to see them as human.

Thank you for the tip. I look forward to watching it.

This was one where she is on her horse is one of the last photos take of Calamity Jane in 1901. She was in the Wild West show and "retired" soon after to return home her cabin. Her health was failing due to a life time of drinking and smoking and manual labor. She died at 53, my age now, just two years after this. They buried her in a dress. (as far as I can find out). From the time she joined the Union Army until death she was rarely photographed in a dress.

[arefriendsdetectives2]

For any fellow Numanoids who missed the Sky Arts documentary, or can’t access it where you live: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AYasui9ooOU

[creativichee]

Assorted recommendations!

I haven't thoroughly reviewed all of these myself yet but they were recommended by friends and I'm putting them here for both my future reference and just to share.

Video Essayists!

F.D Signifier

Come here to watch my video essays on black movies and media

Khadija Mbowe

A "cool, fun, *young* millennial aunty" sits on their bedroom floor talking about whatever they want. Sometimes they talk to their friends.

DnD Talk!

Ginny Di

I'm Ginny Di: Singer, YouTuber, cosplayer, tabletop gaming nerd! On this channel, you'll find advice for D&D players and DMs, character-buil

A great article!

Who Gave You the Right to Tell That Story?

Ten authors on the most divisive question in fiction, and the times they wrote outside their own identities.

This one is not directly on the topic of writing, but if you're working with a character with psychosis this will be very informative!