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This Powerful Spoken Word Poem Celebrates Heritage And Self-Love

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“Afro-Latina, camina conmigo. Salsa swagger anywhere she go, como ‘la negra tiene tumbao! ¡Azucar!’ Dance to the rhythm. Beat the drums of my skin. Afro-descendent, the rhythms within."


Those are the opening lines to award-winning slam champion Elizabeth Acevedo's spoken word poem, “Afro-Latina.” She speaks them with pride pouring from her lips as she recounts how she went how from rejecting her roots to embracing them with open arms.


“My parents' tongue was a gift which I quickly forgot after realizing my peers did not understand it. They did not understand me,” she says in her poem. "So I rejected habichuela y mangú, much preferring Happy Meals and Big Macs. Straightening my hair in imitation of Barbie. I was embarrassed by my grandmother’s colorful skirts and my mother’s [broken English], which cracked my pride when she spoke. So, shit, I would poke fun at her myself, hoping to lessen the humiliation. Proud to call myself American, a citizen of this nation, I hated the caramel color skin. Cursed God I’d been born the color of cinnamon. How quickly we forget where we come from.”


“Afro-Latina” has undergone several revisions to better reflect Acevedo's personal evolution. “[‘Afro-Latina’] was written initially as a group poem with poet and friend Frank Lopez... and overtime I remixed my portions because I felt a need to express that the term ‘Latina’ just didn’t feel specific enough,” she explained in an email to The Huffington Post. “I didn’t feel it adequately represented the way I walked through the world as not only someone who first spoke Spanish, but who also strongly identified with the blackness of my ancestry.”


Her most recent version, seen above, is a raw and honest account of self-discovery, self-acceptance and self-love. “Learning more about the history of the Dominican Republic, of colonialism, of slavery and post-slavery Latin America was huge in shifting what I thought about myself,” she explained to HuffPost. “The more I learned, the more I was proud of how each of these facets survived in the United States. How the survival of my parents' and grandparents' way of life was an extreme rebellion. It’s easy to say 'I want to sound and be like what’s perceived as the majority population' but once I realized that what I was doing was rejecting the richness of my culture, I was able to find ways to begin celebrating and loving myself.”


The intersection of black and Latino identity is often overlooked, be it in the mainstream media, by the government, or by members of both the black and Latino community. 


Acevedo tells HuffPost she attempts to counter that erasure by celebrating her roots and remembering her ancestors in her work. 


“We are the sons and daughters, el destino de mi gente,” she declares in her poem. “Black, brown, beautiful -- viviremos para siempre. Afro-Latinos hasta la muerte.”


 Also on HuffPost: 


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Actor Declared Brain Dead After Simulated Hanging Scene Goes Wrong

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FLORENCE, Italy, Feb 5 (Reuters) - An Italian actor has been declared brain dead after being strangled on stage when a hanging scene went wrong in the central region of Tuscany, a judicial source said on Friday.


The Teatro Lux in Pisa said in a statement it was closing for 10 days because "following the unthinkable tragedy ... we think it right to suspend all our activities, including shows."


Raphael Schumacher, a 27-year-old from northern Italy, had been performing a monolog on adolescent existential unhappiness that ended with a scene of simulated suicide by hanging, local media reported.


The incident occurred during a private performance on Jan. 30, the source said.


Schumacher clinically died on Thursday at the University Hospital of Pisa, where he had been lying in a coma since the incident last weekend, a hospital spokeswoman said.


Police are investigating four people who work for the company that runs the theater for possible manslaughter, the source said.


Daily newspaper Corriere della Sera said Schumacher had chosen at the last moment to use a rope for the suicide scene rather than a pistol, and authorities suspect safety requirements were not adhered to during the performance.


(Reporting by Silvia Ognibene; Writing by Isla Binnie; Editing by Mark Heinrich and Mark Potter)


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Salma Hayek Laughs Off 'Inappropriate' Top After She's Rushed To ER

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Salma Hayek wasn't exactly dressed for the occasion when she was rushed to ER on Friday night.


The "Frida" star was taken to hospital after suffering a head injury on set of her latest movie "Drunk Parents," reports U.S. Weekly. 


But she was wearing a top that made it look like she was naked, apart from a pair of hands cupping her breasts.


The injury thankfully turned out to be minor -- and Hayek laughed off her inappropriate attire when she posted this snap to Instagram:




"Unfortunately my wardrobe for the scene was completely inappropriate for the hospital," the 49-year-old wrote.


She thanked doctors Foster and Ellspermann, who it's believed appear alongside her in the image, adding, "and don't worry it didn't make me any crazier than I was!"


It's unclear exactly which hospital Hayek attended, but it's believed to be in upstate New York.


"Drunk Parents," also starring Joe Manganiello, Bridget Moynahan and Alec Baldwin, is about a couple trying to hide their financial issues from their daughter, according to IMDB. It's due out later this year.


 


Also on HuffPost:




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The Director Of HBO's New James Foley Documentary On Making A Movie About His Childhood Pal

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In August 2014, the American journalist James Foley became a household name. ISIS dropped a video on YouTube in which Foley was beheaded after nearly two years of captivity in Syria. Overnight, escalating concerns of global terrorism seemed to skyrocket. 


Foley is now the subject of a documentary that premiered at last month's Sundance Film Festival and airs on HBO this Saturday. Directed by his childhood friend, Brian Oakes, the film explores Foley's childhood, his journalism and "resolve." One interview subject posits that Foley's death was the biggest American news story since the 9/11 attacks. After winning the Sundance documentary competition's audience award, The Huffington Post sat down with Oakes in New York to discuss Foley's life, his journey with the documentary and his final encounter with his childhood pal.


You had to secure a lot of footage and interviews for the movie. At what point did everything come together so that you knew you had the resources to execute it? 


My original motivation came about three months after Jim was killed, in early November 2014. At that point, that image of Jim in the orange jumpsuit and what he had come to represent across the world was surreal. I mean, this is my friend from first grade, who I’d known my entire life, and he was this symbol of political agendas and a reason to go to war. He was mentioned in an episode of “Homeland” -- stuff that I was so uncomfortable with. So I just started to feel a responsibility, in a way. I don’t want my friend to be represented like that. That’s not his legacy. That’s not the story he leaves behind, and I wanted to do something about that. There’s a man behind that, and it’s a lot more important than what he’s being used as, as a prop, almost. I approached the family because I’ve known them my entire life too, and they were skeptical at first because it was so fresh.


What were their initial reactions? 


They never came out and said, “No, that’s a horrible idea.” What I had said to them was, “Listen, most likely someone’s going to do something on Jim. They might adapt his story for a Hollywood film.” And they still might, I don’t know. Or a bad television drama. Someone’s potentially going to do something, and if that’s the case, I want to do it because I know Jim and I can do the story properly. I could put the kibosh on other people that might be like, “Oh, we’re trying to do a story about hostages,” or something like that. It was kind of important to get out of the gate quick, in that sense. The family didn’t ask any questions; they said, “I think if you want to do it, that would be amazing.” But I wanted them involved, so as I started to develop the narrative, I would tell them that it’s becoming more about Jim as a journalist, as opposed to me growing up with Jim.


Were you ever going to make yourself more of a character? 


No. People had told me that I should think about doing that. But no. A.) This has nothing to do with me, and B.) It’s just another character. There are already a lot of characters. In docs, you typically have six, maybe seven characters. This has like 12, so there’s no reason for me to do that.


So many documentaries suffer because the filmmakers over-insert themselves. You accomplish it by seeing the family members refer to you by name during their interviews. 


Yeah, I definitely break that fourth wall. I do think you watch a film differently if you know who the filmmaker is, especially in the case because I was a childhood friend. You’d think, “Oh, I’m probably going to watch that film a lot differently than if it’s just some director coming in.” 


Did you sit and watch all of Jim's war footage?


Oh yeah. I never got his raw footage. I only got his edited pieces. When you’re filing from Libya or Syria, you can’t just send everything because the Internet is really hard. He would just file selects. He had his laptop stolen and taken away, so I think a lot of his raw footage is gone. A lot of the footage I used was part of his pieces. And Jim was very, very well-respected by his peers and his colleagues, so I just started to reach out to those folks about, “Hey, we’re looking for footage of Libya and Syria, and photos of Jim -- what do you have?” It just started coming in.



You say at the top of the film that you won't show the beheading, but there are tough images nonetheless. Did it seem obvious to you how gruesome you’d let the footage become?


It was never obvious. It was a constant discussion and evolution of what I wanted to show and what was important to show as we developed the narrative. At first, I didn’t want to show anything from the video of Jim in the orange jumpsuit. The war footage I definitely wanted to show because that’s what he was doing.


The great thing is, one of my writers and the editor didn’t know Jim, so it was like this perspective that kept me in line with what’s good for the narrative, as opposed to what I want to show because he’s my friend. You want to say, “Oh, it’s that guy, the journalist who was beheaded in Syria.” But you have to show that image because that’s how everybody knows who James Foley was. The idea of not showing the image quickly went out the door. And then, as we developed the story and it became what it was, when we ultimately get to that moment of Jim’s death, that was a really difficult sequence to edit. What are we going to show? Is it necessary? This is a piece of propaganda video. This is a recruitment video for ISIS, so you run a really difficult line between exploitation versus narrative, and I think ultimately what I ended up realizing was the whole idea of this film was to recontextualize the video. Take it away from its intended purpose and twist it so Jim owns it, because once you understand who Jim was as a person, I believe, it’s no longer this symbol of propaganda. When you see Jim in that element, you see that total resolve and what he endured. Now I feel like that’s his moment. It’s not ISIS’s moment. That was the end of his life, but it means something much bigger now than just a politically fueled image. 


Before making this movie, would you have called yourself a political person? 


No. 


Has it made you more political? 


I would say yeah, definitely. The film is purposefully apolitical for a number of reasons. There are so many political issues this film brings up, and I don’t really like films that just kind of kiss something. You can’t just say, “Oh, totalitarianism,” and then just move on. There’s government hostage policy. Do we bomb ISIS? What do we do with the Syrian government and their regime? Do we pay a ransom? Our government launched a raid at one point to rescue the prisoners, which has since been declassified. It was unsuccessful -- they were too late, and there’s a lot of backstory to this. The criticisms that we get for the film are that it’s not political enough, like, “Oh, it’s dishonest because it’s not talking about these things.” But that’s not dishonesty.


It’s the story you chose to tell. The movie could have been strictly about global politics. 


You could make any kind of movie, but I’m not about to get into any of those topics because I don’t have the time to go over them, and then once I do, then you lose Jim. But, at the same time, what I like about the film, and what I learned -- and this wasn’t intentional -- was that Jim’s story was just this story of this one guy, but the political issues that percolate to the surface are huge, especially now. The Syrian refugee crisis is the biggest refugee crisis since World War II, and Jim was there telling stories about that, like European hostage policy versus American hostage policy. Then there’s humanity, and good versus evil, and all these things that come up. I feel that's more powerful than me saying, “This is what you should be thinking” or “This is what the government should be doing.” I’m not in a position to say that. Jim would hate that, too -- he wouldn’t want me to be political like that. But go ahead and sit in a bar with your buddies for three hours and talk about it. I think the film brings those things to the surface, which is great.


Another political strands involves the forensic investigation into the video. Knowing you would show some of the video, did you explore the fact that some said it was doctored?


There’s going to be conspiracy theorists wherever you go. I learned this lesson when I did a film on the national debt, called “I.O.U.S.A.” One of the guys in that film was a former U.S. comptroller. The film came out, and people were saying it was this and people were saying it was that, and the director was all concerned. And David said, from a very political standpoint, “Listen, all you have to do is focus on the 70 percent.” I said, “What does that mean?” He said, “There’s 15 percent of people on the left and there’s 15 percent of people on the right that have very extreme views. Focus on the 70 percent in the middle because the 15 percent on the left and the 15 percent on the right, you’re never going to reach them. No matter what you do, you’re never going to change their minds or satisfy their desires." Whether it’s conspiracy theorists or people saying this is a fake video, it’s not worth my time. It’s all bullshit. I don’t know if you want to print that, but it’s true.


How much time did you spend with each of Jim’s family members? 


I did two interviews with Diane, Jim’s mother, and I did one interview with everybody else. They lasted anywhere from two and a half to four hours. This was the first time I’ve ever done long-form interviewing. My approach was to spend the morning with them. We’d get breakfast and tea and chat. I already knew them, but I wanted to spend time with them.


Without cameras rolling?


No cameras. And then we’d have lunch, and then sit down and do the interview later in the day. Even when I met with [journalists Daniel and Pierre and Didier and Nicolas], I was comfortable. I brought Michael and Katy, Jim's two siblings, to France with me to do those interviews. Diane had put me in touch with them, so there's an immediate comfort factor. These were Jim’s friends. It was nice because they knew I wasn’t there for some agenda-driven angle. I was just Jim’s friend making a documentary. That really helped me out. 


Did you set terms for the interviews?


It was kind of different for everybody. No one ever said, “Nothing’s off-limits,” but I was very clear at the beginning that if I asked a question people weren’t comfortable with, just tell me and we’d move on. It was more conversational than anything. I think, for the hostages, with Daniel, they were just like, “Listen, I’d love to talk about Jim and my experience with Jim in captivity,” but they didn’t really want to talk about their own experiences. It was more about keeping it on Jim. They didn’t want the focus to be on them or their torture, which is fine -- I didn’t want to go there anyway.


The rub of documentaries and reality TV is that you need unscripted content to fit into sound bites. Everything your subjects say has to be clear and succinct, or else it's no good. When you’re doing tough interviews like that, how do you ensure you’re getting content that will translate? 


Luckily, all the subjects I interviewed are amazing speakers. That helped. These are journalists, so they’re very eloquent and they have a point of view. That was obviously a great thing to have. Daniel had been interviewed quite a bit, and he said to me, “This is a really great interview because you actually allowed me to talk.” My interview style is to ask a question and then I don’t really interrupt. I just let it go until it’s done. I think that’s why our interviews were so long. It’s not like I was going in there trying to get them to say something. That was the nature of the interview because I didn’t really know what I was going to get. They would be done talking and I would just kind of sit there in silence, which I love. This is something I learned from listening to Werner Herzog. Those moments when you’re done saying something and you just look at them and don’t say anything, there’s this awkward silence.


You both don’t know what the next beat is, and you use that to your advantage. I know the technique well.


Yeah, it builds so much empathy for someone because you catch them in this moment of thought. They might say something and they’re finished talking, and you just kind of sit there and they sometimes will kind of look away and think about what they’ve just said. As the viewer, seeing them to do that, you have this empathy for them, and it’s amazing. I love that. It just allows them to just be in their moment. It obviously ends up being really long interviews and a lot of footage, but I do think you get better clarity or better answers from people because you give them a chance to think about it.



What was the hardest thing for you to leave out of the documentary?


I think all the childhood stuff, like my backstory growing up with Jim. We grew up in Wolfeboro, New Hampshire, which is this tiny, rural Norman Rockwell town on Lake Winnipesaukee. It was this quaint New England town, and none of that is in the film. We had tons and tons of memories, so a lot of the first things I started cutting were all these little stories of, “Oh, once we went out on a lake and did something stupid, and then we played soccer together and Jim was in this really funny game show on New Hampshire public television.” It was all these childhood memories and they were hilarious to me. But that’s why it was great to have writers who didn’t know Jim. I’d be like, “This is five minutes of the film!” And they’d be like, “No, it’s hilarious to you but will mean nothing to anyone else. All you need is a six-second clip in the title sequence and you get the point." 


When was your last contact with Jim?


My last contact with Jim, I believe, was the summer before he was captured on Thanksgiving Day 2012. He had come to New York. I mean, he was transient. Whenever he’d come through New York, it was like, “Oh, you’ve got an hour or two with Jim, he’s coming through.” He was always bopping around and going in and out of Libya or Syria or something. I think my last contact was that summer. He was in transition and thinking about going into Syria for the first time.


Did you ever feel compelled to urge him not to go to Syria? 


I was never one to tell him not to do it. Honestly, what happened in Libya was horrible and scary at the time, but when he was freed and it was all resolved, there was so much euphoria. You just kind of get complacent again. Then, he went back to Libya and he was safe and just got back into the job. So Libya just became part of the deal.


His first stint in captivity seemed like an anomaly. 


Yeah, exactly. And it wasn’t like he was the only one doing this stuff. It was his job and he loved it, so maybe I was naïve about the dangers, but I never said, “Don’t do that.” That’s what Jim does -- he’s a journalist. He knows what he’s doing.


Did he seem like the same Jim you’d known all your life? 


Yeah, because I never saw him after he went over to Syria the first time. Syria was really where he started to be affected by what he was seeing. Syria is bad. It’s like hell. So after Libya, you could see he was a changed person, for sure. He was just a little bit more solitary, I would say. But he never wanted to show it. Everything was always cool. He would say, “No, no, everything’s all right.” I think he kept a lot of things inside of him. They became his own personal tortures. I think he suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder, for sure.


You would have to assume so. 


We kind of allude to it in the film. He was definitely changed, but he never was concerned, I guess. He dealt with it really well. He was a tough dude.


When did the family first see the movie? 


I showed them cuts of the film earlier. I showed them a rough cut in October. I needed to make sure they were cool with everything. 


And were they?


They were. They trusted me. I think that cut was maybe three hours. It was long, but it was important for me to get their feedback because, in a way, it was a collaboration. You needed the family’s blessing to do it, as hard as it was. They probably saw two or three more cuts after that. 


What was the energy in the room when you watched it together for the first time? 


I was sweating profusely. It was really, really nerve-racking, but it was super emotional, as you can imagine. We watched it up in New Hampshire in their living room. It was the first time they’d really seen anything put together like that. It was really emotional.


"Jim: The James Foley Story" airs Feb. 6 on HBO. This interview has been edited and condensed. 



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Beyoncé Is Back And Unapologetically Black In New Music Video

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It's official: Beyoncé is back, she's "got hot sauce in her bag" and she's as unapologetically black as ever. 


Queen B surprised us all on Saturday by dropping "Formation," a new song and accompanying music video -- and, needless to say, both are incredible. 



The song, which runs nearly five minutes and was released the night before the singer's scheduled Super Bowl performance, is fierce, funky and freaking phenomenal. But what separates the video from most of her other mainstream work is its messages relating to race, identity and black culture. 



The video is filled with some pretty powerful imagery, including a sinking New Orleans police car, a young kid in a black hoodie dancing in front of a lineup of cops, and a wall painted with the words "Stop Shooting Us." Oh, and there's a glorious cameo from Beyoncé's daughter, Blue Ivy, who's rocking her natural hair. 


Basically, the video is a representation of the best of #BlackGirlMagic, #BlackLivesMatter and #BlackPride.


The video quickly drew praise from singer Solange, Beyoncé's younger sister who has never been one to stay quiet about important issues of race: 


 





 

And she wasn't the only one. Check out some of the other celebratory tweets that followed:  





































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The 2016 Super Bowl Commercials You Need To See

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Super Bowl 50 is finally here, which means the Super Bowl 50 commercials are here as well. 


From avocados and Drake to odes to mom and dogs dressed up as hot dogs, there's a lot to take in this year when the game cuts to commercial. Some of the ads might tug at your heartstrings. Some might make you laugh. Some might make you wonder, "Did they really pay millions of dollars for that?"


Regardless of how they make you feel, here are all the 2016 Super Bowl commercials you need to see in one place. 



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Trippy Video Teaches Entire History Of Japan In Just 9 Minutes

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Looking for a speedy study guide to help pass that exam on Japanese history? Then this trippy yet excellent YouTube video could do the trick.


Bill Wurtz rattles through the Land of the Rising Sun's entire past during the colorful whistle-stop, 9-minute lecture. Buddhism, internal conflict, alliances with Britain, World Wars I and II, the dropping of atomic bombs and its post-war economic miracle are all covered.





Questioned on Ask.fm about whether he'd make a similar history video for the U.S., Wurtz said he "wrote one last year but it fell apart somewhere around the Louisiana purchase. I may try to salvage that one or possibly start again."


We can't wait to see that.


The "History of Japan" video, which was posted last Tuesday, has already racked up more than 4 million views.


"Beautiful," as Wurtz would say in glorious, flashing technicolor.


 


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20 Young Writers Of Color Share Their Favorite Poems

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In December, The New York Times invited noted writers, actors and public figures to share their favorite poems, reaching out to people like Ta-Nehisi Coates, Elena Ferrante Tavi Gevinson, Lena Dunham and Junot Díaz, among others. 


After reading the published list, Tabia Alexine, a Los Angeles-based curator and creative, was disappointed. "It was a compelling group, but not as diverse and intersectionally colorful as I'd hoped," she explained to The Huffington Post. Soon after, Alexine embarked on a project of her own, reaching out to young writers of color she admired to bring the original list the multiplicity both readers and writers deserve. 


Alexine collected the perspectives of 20 new voices, each explaining the power of a single poem. "The responses reflect a spectrum of experience among the writers," she explained. "But I did notice that several poems discussed discovery, social justice, and resistance through existence and survival."


Looking forward, Alexine hopes future articles in outlets like The New York Times will represent a wider range of backgrounds and perspectives. And that the cultural landscape at large will follow suit. "I hope to see poetry and art by talented persons of color more widely distributed via TV, film, in commercials, at events, galleries, and conferences," she continued. "I love seeing books like The Breakbeat Poets sold at major retailer, Barnes & Noble. I also believe performance poets and writers deserve increased honorariums for their work. I want to be a catalyst, pushing all of those things forward."


Right in time for Black History Month, Alexine's diversified anthology speaks to the importance of poetry to voices too often marginalized or silenced. "It can be such a powerful platform for truth-telling, disruption, affirmation, and empathy," she said. "The vulnerability and realness I've witnessed within the poetry world is unlike any other medium in my mind. These 20 individuals are unapologetically taking up space and making noise as writers, activists, performers, educators, literary editors, students, and so much more."


Learn about their favorite poems, and the stories behind them: 


1. Jamila Woods



"I recently discovered Audre Lorde’s poetry collection, The Black Unicorn, on a friend’s bookshelf. 'A Woman Speaks' struck me because of the economy of language and her unapologetic declaration of her power as a black woman. I love the lines: 'moon marked and touched by sun / my magic is unwritten' and, 'beware my smile / I am treacherous with old magic and the noon’s new fury.'


"To me this poem is a mantra and an affirmation. Black girl magic is not a new phenomenon. Audre Lorde’s poem gives me permission to own my magic and inspires me to constantly search for new language to describe it."


Jamila Woods is a singer and poet based in Chicago. She is Associate Artistic Director of Young Chicago Authors and member of the Dark Noise Collective.


2. Fatimah Asghar



"I've read 'Delores Jepps' by Tim Seibles every single day since the new year has started. I love Tim's work in general: his playful narrative explorations, his love songs to the world, his persona poems. He's such a versatile and splendid writer. This poem is my favorite in the collection Fast Animal. It's such a sweet memory of infatuation and the innocence in it is such a delight: 'she'd be standing soaked / in schoolday morning light' and 'the gloss on her lips sighed / kiss me and you'll never / do homework again.'


"I love the way that Tim explores these wonderfully simple moments, the loneliness of youth and how a teenage heart full of love and longing can sometimes be enough to serve as protection from the cruelty of the world."


Fatimah Asghar is a poet based in Chicago, and a member of the Dark Noise Collective. Her chapbook, "After," was published by YesYes Books in the fall of 2015.


3. Camonghne Felix



"I'm pretty sure that 'Star Gazing' by Dominique Christina will always be the most important poem I have ever experienced. 'Star Gazing' is the first poem about sexual assault that brought me to tears. It's the first poem ever to bring me a concrete sense of healing and every time I watch it, I cry. Like hiccuping, mascara bleeding, ugly, joyful tears. It gives me new perspective by which to talk about and understand my assault.


"This poem allows me to feel joy and happiness while still confronting the violence of rape. Instead of reflecting on the pain of the assault and the person who hurt me, I reflect on the first time I willingly gave myself to someone. I reflect on how loved, protected and beautiful I feel every time I am with my current partner. It reminds me that, though the assault may have left my dignity compromised, it wasn't stolen. My body is still mine. The choice is still mine. And I am nobody's victim, especially because I survived. 'God bless the girl who goes back for her body.'" ­­


Camonghne Felix is a poet, writer and speechwriter to Governor Andrew Cuomo. Her first collection of poetry, Yolk, was published by Penmanship Books in March of 2015. You can find her work on various platforms, including Teen Vogue and Poetry Magazine.


4. Alok Vaid ­Menon



"Author of 'The Moon is Trans,' Joshua Jennifer Espinoza, is consistently one of my favorite poets because she effortlessly captures the daily trials and tribulations of navigating the world as not just a trans body, but a body, period.


"In a cultural moment when trans narratives are only invited to the table when we are inspirational and resilient, ­­Joshua Jennifer Espinoza creates a space for us to be trans and angry, trans and sad, trans and hurt. I think her work is so politically important ­­ this poem in particular is striking to me with how unapologetic it is, with how powerful the vision is of a world where transness is just accepted simply for being, not just for doing."


Alok Vaid­ Menon is a South Asian trans femme performance artist and one­ half of the performance art duo DarkMatter.


5. Joshua Bennett



"I think of this poem, 'My Story in a Late Style of Fire' by Larry Levis, fairly often as of late, mostly because of the way Levis narrativizes loss throughout. And not only the loss of the beloved, but also the loss of a certain kind of life. I'm interested in what wrestling with that loss produces, what happens when we love and lose and try again with no evidence that anything will change other than the particular choreography of our efforts, and then give that process to the page, or even just live the thing out and see how it feels.


"Oh, and 'I know this isn’t much. / But I wanted to explain this life to you, even if / I had to become, over the years, someone else to do it.' is one of my favorite passages of text in the English language. Those are lines to live by, for sure."


Joshua Bennett hails from Yonkers, N.Y., and is a PhD candidate in the English department at Princeton University. Winner of the 2015 National Poetry Series, his debut collection, The Sobbing School, will be published by Penguin Books in 2016.


6. Jacqui Germain



"Picking a 'favorite' poem feels impossible, but 'Volver, Volver' by Ariana Brown is definitely one I return to often. I believe that poets are cultural workers, as Toni Cade Bambara suggests­­. And 'Volver, Volver' reminds me that the work, as poets of color, is to excavate, to honor, to remember, to imagine, to resist, to attack empire with every line, every story, every poem. This is, in part, the work of legacy and heritage­­ which, for people of color, is certainly in resistance to empire­­ and as Ariana says, 'the tongue must reacquaint itself with the work of legacy ... the work is never done.'"


-Jacqui Germain is a poet and writer based in St. Louis. Her poetry chapbook, When the Ghosts Come Ashore, was recently released through Button Poetry and Exploding Pinecone Press.


7. Janani Balasubramanian



"As a sci­-fi/speculative fiction writer, I often think about the linkages between racialized histories and the arc of major sci­-fi narratives. Why is Jennifer Lawrence the star of 'Hunger Games'? Beats me. My favorite poem isn't quite a poem, but it is 'poetic' and those boundaries don't make sense anyway since we're all just trying to whisper truths into an unforgiving, acheful universe. So here's a 'poetic quote' from one of my favorite nerds, Junot Diaz:



Look, without our stories, without the true nature and reality of who we are as People of Color, nothing about fanboy or fangirl culture would make sense. What I mean by that is: if it wasn't for race, X-Men doesn't sense. If it wasn't for the history of breeding human beings in the New World through chattel slavery, Dune doesn't make sense. If it wasn't for the history of colonialism and imperialism, Star Wars doesn't make sense. If it wasn't for the extermination of so many Indigenous First Nations, most of what we call science fiction’s contact stories doesn't make sense. Without us as the secret sauce, none of this works, and it is about time that we understood that we are the Force that holds the Star Wars universe together. We’re the Prime Directive that makes Star Trek possible, yeah. In the Green Lantern Corps, we are the oath. We are all of these things -- erased, and yet without us -- we are essential.



"I really believe in us: the nerds and the dreamers and the aliens and the bacteria not quite of this world. And I return to this pithy quote quite often while trudging through the unglamorous and lonely act of noveling (setting empathy to page). We have so much imagining to do."


Janani Balasubramanian is an artist, nerd, and one­ half of the performance art duo DarkMatter. Janani's working on their first sci­-fi trilogy, Sleeper.


8. Joshua Aiken



"I love Dominique Christina’s poem 'The Dream About Shouting.' It reminds me that silence is not neutral. That people are told that their life and voice do not matter. Forces that use trauma, violence, and power to keep folks quiet. That for many people using their voice and speaking truth is a brave form of resistance. That the individual act of 'burning / your mouth down' means dismantling the mechanisms by which people silence you."


Joshua Aiken is a poet and playwright whose work has been featured in publications such as the Winter Tangerine Review, Assaracus, and was nominated for a Pushcart Prize by cahoodaloodaling. Selected as a Rhodes Scholar, he is currently a graduate student at the University of Oxford.


9. Danez Smith



"Some poems never really leave you once you hear them. Ariana Brown's 'Wolfchild' was one of those poems for me last year. Brown speaks on black and brownness with such complexity and rawness and grace in this piece. Every time I come back to it I'm amazed how through such stunning language she creatives something so magical and clear and needed in our conversations about re­imagining America and America­ness. Hella stunning, hella important, and also just a fantastic poem. I'm voting for this poem in the primaries."


Danez Smith is the author of Don't Call Us Dead (Graywolf Press, 2017) and [insert] Boy (YesYes Books, 2014), winner of the Lambda Literary Award. They have been featured widely including on Buzzfeed, Blavity & in Poetry Magazine and are a member of the Dark Noise Collective.


10. Safia Elhillo



"I am so drawn to poems that showcase obsession, and often tend toward obsession myself. I read 'Blue,' by Carl Phillips' almost every day. In this poem, I see blue where I am not usually told to look for it -- not in calm sky or water, in the kind of boring, placid pastoral scenes usually reserved for blue, but in 'the black, shot with blue, of my dark / daddy’s knuckles' or 'the lining of / certain fish split open and scooped / clean.'


"This introduces us to the violence that blue can also contain, that is not immediately associated with it but is just as much a part of it as a smooth sheet of lake or ocean with troubled waters just underneath. Everything in its world seems born of this single 'blue vein / that rides,' and one need not actively pursue it because it will be there, as it has always been there."


Safia Elhillo is Sudanese by way of Washington, D.C. She is a Cave Canem fellow, Pushcart nominee, and poetry editor at Kinfolks Quarterly: a journal of black expression. Safia's is the 2016 Sillerman First Book Prize for African Poets for her manuscript, Asmarani.


11. Nate Marshall



"One of my favorite poems of all time is Martin Espada's joint 'Imagine the Angels of Bread.' I came across it in high school and I've never been able to shake it. This poem speaks so powerfully about the possibility of a new kind of justice beginning today. I find a lot of poetry that speaks to social issues is either pessimistic, angry, or depressing and this poem always reminds me that the role of the artist is, in part, to imagine the next world of expanded freedom."


Nate Marshall is the author of Wild Hundreds and editor of The BreakBeat Poets: New American Poetry in the Age of Hip­Hop. He is also a member of the Dark Noise Collective.


12. Janae Johnson



"I’m particularly drawn to poets who write from vulnerability to triumph. 'Trigger' by Porsha Olayiwola speaks to the intersection of diction, class, race, and the politics of language. Porsha provides a ferocious response to the criticism associated with her 'mother tongue' as a black womyn, while cleverly providing social context and personal narrative. The poem itself is brilliant, fun, commanding, raw, and surprisingly elegant. As a black educator, who often struggles with articulating myself, I find this poem to be both validation and redemption."


Janae Johnson is a spoken word poet, teaching artist, educator and co-­founder of The House Slam poetry venue in Boston. She is the 2015 Women of the World Poetry Slam Champion and 2015 National Poetry Slam Champion.


13. Hieu Minh Nguyen​



"Out of all my favorite poems, I return most to Jason Shinder's 'Untitled.' I am constantly in awe of its tenderness. It's the last poem in his last book, Stupid Hope (published posthumously), and every time I finish the last couplet, 'Let me / Let me keep on describing things to be sure they happened.' ​my face becomes a hole."


Hieu Minh Nguyen is the author of the poetry collection, This Way to the Sugar. He is a Kundiman fellow and a poetry editor for Muzzle Magazine.


14. Franny Choi



"If the best poems contain a transformative element, Ross Gay's 'Small Needful Fact' is actual magic. To me, this poem is proof of the necessity of the thought experiment as a tool for survival. And it is one of the humblest and most beautiful poems in the realm of poems addressing police violence that I have ever read. It does, I think, exactly what poems are meant to do."


Franny Choi is a Rhode Island State Council on the Arts Fellow, a Project VOICE teaching artist, a member of the Dark Noise Collective, and the author of Floating, Brilliant, Gone (Write Bloody Publishing).


15. Porsha O.



"I believe in poetic monologues. I believe in narrative. I believe in the use of vulgarity to disrupt conventional language. In 'Rhonda, Age 15 Emergency Room,'I think what I believe in most is Letta Neely’s highlighting of intersectionality. Rhonda, the narrator is a teenaged person, a poor person, Black, a woman, queer, and an academically at­ risk student who is also a victim of the prison industrial complex. This poem completely tears at my heart with its blunt and consistent oppression while simultaneously giving me hope as a poor Black lesbian, who spends much of her time with young folk who walk through the world with so many things to carry.


"I have no choice but to believe in Rhonda’s potential because it is directly tied to my own. I know that even after the poem is over, Rhonda is alive, in an emergency room, narrating her story, and still actively waking up to survive everyday, in what I imagine to be, the most revolutionary of ways."


Porsha O. is the 2014 Individual World Poetry Slam Champion, the 2015 National Poetry Slam Champion, and the co­-founder of House Slam. She identifies as a Black, poet, dyke­goddess, a hip­hop feminist, an educator, and an organizer.


16. Carvens Lissaint



"'Isms,' by the 2013 Nuyorican Poetry Slam Team, is a poem that rocks the foundations of my soul. Having spent this last decade as a professional artist, it is so important for me to get a jolt of revelation and inspiration. This poem is a reminder of the value we all have as poets, and that our stories are unique pieces of light that have supernatural strength, while shedding light in the darkest corners of the earth."


Carvens Lissaint is an international award­-winning poet and currently a MFA candidate at NYU Tisch School of The Arts Graduate Acting Program. 


17. Aziza Barnes



"Ross Gay is a master of getting down to the real, peeling away the lies we tell ourselves to make the words of our personal narratives pretty. The reason I chose his poem, 'Feet,' is for Gay's heart shattering vulnerability, how the poem isn't about his feet or the woman Tina, who compliments his feet; that the poem is in fact about the impossibility of handing to the reader the way he sees the world. The 'little factory in my head.' This is the reason I write poetry, cuz we can't just hand each other our little factories. I'm incredibly thankful for this poem and this writer."


Aziza Barnes is blk & alive. Born in Los Angeles Aziza currently lives in Oxford, Mississippi. Aziza's is the author of i be but i ain’t (Yes Yes Books, 2015) and me Aunt Jemima and the nailgun published from Button Poetry. Aziza is a member of The Dance Cartel and the divine fabrics collective.


18. Malcolm London



"'Beverly Hills, Chicago' by Gwendolyn Brooks was the first poem I read giving a honest observation of inequity without any blame­­ not that there isn't centuries of oppression, pervasive white supremacy and indifference to how it continues to deny access by social death to blame ... but this poem, to the 15-year-old-me who was traversing a city swelled with segregation like a puffed pigeon, it was holy text. When Gwendolyn Brooks says, 'We do not want them to have less / But it is only natural that we should think we have not enough ...' is exactly what I felt growing up going to high school in Lincoln Park and living in [the] Austin neighborhood on the city's westside.


"I was in classes with kids wealthier than me and though I loved them, I envied them and this poem told me it was natural to want to have. That wanting to not be stopped by police on my way home, to want to not see my mom and pops struggle just to keep a roof over their heads, to want to be able to afford college, to want to have money to go out to off-campus lunch with my friends, to ask why can't we live in a world where all kids in Chicago can have access to all the things my more wealthier white double honors classmates had. This poem, incredible in the way it humanizes people, both well off and not so, empowered me to start asking the right questions."


Called the Gil­ Scott-Heron of his generation by Cornel West, Malcolm London is an internationally recognized Chicago poet, organizer, performer and educator. London, who is mostly known for declining modeling opportunities to dedicate his life to art education and activism, is currently working on releasing two anticipated art projects in 2016.


19. Aaron Samuels



"I have watched the world murder, exploit, and devalue Black bodies my entire life. This past year, an eerie wave seems to have emerged where mainstream news publications are finally now discussing ghosts that have haunted my community and my heritage. Aziza Barnes's poem 'My Dad asks, 'How Come Black Folks Can't Just Write About Flowers' speaks to the experience of a child of color learning what it means to grow up in this world, and the pressure to live in a perpetual state of fear. Through a brutal description of a childhood scene the poem also forces the reader to ask for more than pain, and more than death. Through expressing its opposite, Aziza Barnes demands for Black joy, and by doing so, emboldens the reader to demand it as well."


Aaron Samuels is the co-founder and chief operating officer of Blavity, a digital community for Black Millennials. His debut collection of poetry, Yarmulkes & Fitted Caps, was released on Write Bloody Publishing in fall 2013.


20. Yosimar Reyes



"I love poems but more than poems I love the story behind the poem. I like digging into the words until I find that living thing that resonates with me. As a Latino writer, it is seldom that we get taught our own writing. When I read 'Beautiful and Cruel' by [Sandra] Cisneros not only did I feel proud that I could understand and know a story so similar but I also felt proud that Cisneros also challenges values in our culture.


"Being raised by women, gender dynamics of labor were evident in our Latino household, but here was Cisneros writing about a quiet revolution, one where a young girl made the choice to live a life free of cultural expectations. As a queer feminine latino boy, this helped me imagine a world where my Latino culture did not limit me but one where I could embrace the good and leave what did not seem appropriate to me."


Yosimar Reyes is a nationally acclaimed poet, educator, performance artist and public speaker. Born in Guerrero, Mexico, and raised in Eastside San Jose, Calif.k Reyes holds a B.A. in creative writing and is an Arts Fellow at Define American, an organization founded by Pulitzer Prize­-winning journalist Jose Antonio Vargas.


For more on the beauty of slam poetry, check out our video series with Aja Monet, Shira Erlichman and Monica McClure


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Every Day For 20 Years, Willard Hill Made A Sculpture From Trash

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"He just kept saying, 'I didn’t think anybody would care, I didn’t think anybody would care,'" Paige Weary explained in an interview with The Huffington Post.


Weary, the owner of Los Angeles' Good Luck Gallery, is describing her first interaction with artist Willard Hill, who, for the past 20 years, has been creating bundled sculptures of masking tape and discarded goods in the privacy of his own home, with no knowledge that anyone from the outside world would consider his secluded pastime art. 


Hill was born and raised in Manchester, Tenn., a city with a population of approximately 10,000. One of eight children, Hill lost his mother when he was a kid, and his father left the family soon after. Without any grandparents to step in, the Hill children virtually raised themselves. "It was survival mode," Weary responded when I asked if Hill had ever visited a museum as a kid. "He has never been to a museum, and he is 80."


His standout memories from childhood involve being selected from his class to paint Christmas scenes on the windows during the holidays. "He never thought of any of that as art," Weary clarified. As an adult, Hill expressed himself mainly through cooking, working as a chef specializing in Southern food.  



Things took a turn for Hill around 20 years ago when he suffered a hernia that kept him tethered to the home. He got sick of watching TV and, according to Weary, noticed some wire and tape sitting nearby. He just started making things, and has done so every day for the past two decades. 


More specifically, Hill makes ragtag sculptures from whatever loot he happens to scoop up from his surroundings, wrapping his spoils in masking tape in a variety of wiry configurations. In one, a horse draws a carriage with a rider on top and three miniature passengers in the rear, a small bug-eyed critter dangling off the back as a final punchline.


Hill never plans out what a sculpture is going to look like beforehand, but rather lets the materials guide the way. The figures emerge organically from no particular vision. Googly eyes are the one constant, giving the miniature works an adorable yet monstrous feel, while uniting the whole bunch as one big, motley family. 



Hill had only tried to sell his artworks once before. At a friend's suggestion, he brought them to the Manchester flea market and set up a booth, offering them for $20 each. None sold, and that was that. He traded a couple of figures with an auto body shop in exchange for a car service, and another visitor to the auto shop noticed the dusty totems and recognized them as art. He contacted Weary, who eventually travelled to meet Hill in person. 


"I had never seen anything like it before," Weary said. "Like a lot of outsider artists, it’s solely his original voice. Taking trash and creating these little scenes -- people in fancy outfits, riding horses and buggies. It’s kind of a treasure trove, for an outsider gallery to find someone like this."



Although Hill offered to sell a work for $20, Weary offered $200, estimating what she thought she could get for the piece at her gallery. Hill was floored, even more so when Weary took home 200 works. The hefty sale, however, didn't even make a dent in Hill's extensive home collection, which numbers in the thousands, with creatures and characters crammed into nearly every corner of his home. "You couldn’t even tell that we had taken anything. That’s how much work is in his house."


"He is one of the sweetest people I’ve ever met," Weary continued, explaining that the checks he's received from the gallery so far have gone toward providing the members of his church community with Christmas dinner and repairs for their basketball hoops.


Now retired, Hill is a homebody through and through. He occasionally goes fishing -- the fruits of which he also gifts to his neighbors and friends -- but aside from that, he prefers not to leave the house. He cooks at home for his wife and kids, and he makes art -- lots of it. "Nowadays, most of us don’t think there are people just sitting in their house making thousands of pieces of art," Weary said, "but they’re still out there." 


Willard Hill's work will show at Good Lucky Gallery in Los Angeles,Calif., from February 27 until April 2, 2016. Learn more about Hill in the video below: 






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Why Do We Laugh At Kanye West’s Anger?

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The only time I saw Kanye West perform, he came onstage very, very late. I was covered in dirt and sweat, as most Bonnaroo Music Festival attendees are, but I was determined to hear my favorite album of the past few years, “Graduation,” performed IRL.


Kanye’s show was slated to begin at 2 a.m., so my friend and I straggled near the stage around 1:30, debating whether or not “Stronger” would make for a better opener or encore. This was good enough fodder to last us through about 2:30, and by 3 we were irked. The fans around us were more than annoyed -- rightfully so -- and by the time Kanye finally showed after 4 a.m., his lethargic performance was the tipping point for the groggy, pissed off crowd. Muffled boos escalated into a swell of enraged chants, as the artist’s fans yelled in unison, “F**k Kanye!”


It didn’t go over well.


“This is the most offended I’ve ever been,” Kanye wrote on his blog, where he blamed the earlier Pearl Jam set and the intricate design involved in his own rocket ship-fueled performance for his lateness. Professing his devotion to his fans, he aired his disappointment in typical hyperbolic fashion, writing, “This is the maddest I ever will be.”


Which, of course, turned out not to be true. In the years since the 2008 Bonnaroo fiasco, his reputation for rage-fueled rants has escalated, beginning with a mic-stealing stunt at the MTV Video Music Awards -- the interjection that launched 1,000 memes -- and an explosive radio interview with Sway Calloway. If you were on the Internet last month, you saw his feud with Wiz Khalifa over the alleged title of his forthcoming album 




Although we scorn him -- or, more recently, laugh dismissively -- when his public behavior exhibits these traits, they’re the exact qualities we admire in his music.


As fans or decriers, we’ve witnessed enough of Kanye’s unadulterated anger to notice a few recurring patterns: he’s been known to make liberal use of the caps locks key (and its verbal equivalent), his insults often reflect insecurity about fashion and other commercial forms of self-expression, and he tends to rant from the heart, speaking before his arguments are fully formed.


Although we scorn him -- or, more recently, laugh dismissively -- when his public behavior exhibits these traits, they’re the exact qualities we admire in his music.


When he released “Yeezus,” West’s angriest album to date was praised by Pitchfork, dubbed a valiant and successful “maximalist” effort. “For Kanye, there's purpose in repulsion,” the review reads. “And on 'Yeezus,' he trades out smooth soul and anthemic choruses for jarring electro, acid house, and industrial grind while delivering some of his most lewd and heart-crushing tales yet.” Translation, sans genre jargon: baring his soul sans-filter made for a listening experience that was both complex and immediate.


The album was given a 9.5, for its treatment of the “human voice.” Another choice quote: “discomfort is essential to his enduring appeal.” Reviewers elsewhere agreed.


It’s true. Listening to ‘Ye lay his discomfort -- or, let’s call it what it is, his anger -- to bare resulted in an honest listening experience, even on tracks occasionally graced with the sheen of clubby beats. If Jay Z’s epithet is “the Confident,” and Drake’s “the Sentimental,” “Yeezus” showed that Kanye’s pithy descriptor is “angry.” And yet, when his personal brand and online presence align with that, fans are mystified, if not mocking.


This is especially frustrating when compared with the perception of similarly pissed-off rock musicians, who articulate their frustrations in terms that are framed as praiseworthy. Probably the most notable example is fans’ reaction to a short, newly electric set performed by Bob Dylan in 1966 -- the one where waves of booing climaxed when an audience member yelled, “Judas!”


Dylan -- who we admire for his bold, and yes, angry criticisms of societal and governmental wrongs -- did not take the insult in stride. “I don’t believe you,” he jeered back. “You’re a liar! You’re a f**king liar!”


It’s an incoherent retort, to be sure, but one that’s typically discussed as a keen defense of his own artistic choices, not arrogant blather. That’s the gamble when we commit to hot-headed, off-the-cuff artists; they may, on occasion, speak with the same unfiltered vigor with which they sing or perform. This payoff is typically deemed worth it -- Jeff Tweedy’s brooding lyrics, for example, justify the fact that he punched a dude who tried to come onstage, and once left mid-show in a huff.


Kanye’s outbursts, on the other hand, are the butts of jokes and the subject of memes. His emotional, uncontrolled self-defenses are characteristic of musicians, but are honed in on as an example of major self-awareness deficits.


But for every knee-jerk reaction, packed with insight into his values and insecurities, Kanye has a compact, reflective lyric to his name. “Everything I’m not made me everything I am,” he crooned nonchalantly in an ode to his own shortcomings, one that’s curiously left out of discussions of his discography.


So rant away, Kanye. This fan will continue to listen in earnest.


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Moroccan Town Becomes Home To Largest Mural In North Africa

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Italian artist Giacomo Bufarini, known as RUN, has painted a giant fresco in the Moroccan coastal town of Essaouira. The 6,400-square-meter mural stretches across the floor of the city’s main square, Moulay Hassan.


The fresco required a week of work, said Kaoutar Chakir, the general secretary of the Essaouira Mogador Association, which is tasked with the cultural and socio-economic revitalization of the city. Bufarini finished the fresco on February 3, with the help of 10 local students.


Adorning the floor of the Moulay Hassan square, the fresco depicts two figures on opposite sides of a narrow river, facing  each other and trying to communicate. The mural can be read as a symbol of unity and dialogue.


The London-based Italian artist Bufarini has painted large-scale murals in various other global cities, including in countries like China, Italy and Senegal. He is known for his striking compositions, lively colors and attention to detail. He uses his art as a playful means of communication, painting characters with minimal features that could easily speak to people from various backgrounds. 


"We came to Essaouira to paint the place Moulay Hassan, we found an endless ocean of inspiration,” the artist posted on his Facebook page.


This fresco, the biggest in north Africa, was created as part of the sixth Marrakech Biennale, which will take place from February 24 to May 8. RUN is among a group of globally renowned street artists invited to participate in a parallel project dubbed "MB6 Street Art,” which will be open from February 24 through the official end of the Biennale.



This story originally appeared on HuffPost Morocco. It has been translated into English and edited for clarity.


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7 Honest Comics That Sum Up Date Night For Parents

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Parents know the meaning of "date night" changes a bit after having kids. Once romantic, relaxing evenings for two transform into chaotic family dinners, couples' nap-time and anxiety-filled outings punctuated by phone calls to the babysitter.


In honor of Valentine's Day, here are seven honest comics that show what romance looks like for parents:



 


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Friend Of A Friend Is The 'Humans of Social Media' You Never Knew You Needed

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Imagine meeting 100 people you only know from the Internet.


Sort of scary, right?


You also might be thinking, "I don't even know that many people from the Internet!" But, if you combine your Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram following, you might be surprised at the number of not-quite-friends you have on there.


Photographer and social media producer Jeff Meltz wanted to play with the idea of digital friendships and created a pretty dope project out of it: Friend of a Friend.


Friend of a Friend is a photo project shot with Polaroid SLR 680 that sort of resembles the lovechild of popular Facebook group and photography project Humans of New York and social media.



"I wanted to spend more one-on-one time with people who I felt I only knew on the surface." Meltz told The Huffington Post. "I love listening to people's stories about how they became who they are."


Meltz's project began with his goal of shooting "100 different instant film portraits of 100 individuals all in one summer, Memorial Day to Labor Day." He began shooting in the summer of 2015 and all of the subjects were people he knew through "digital means (social media followers/follows, connections made over email, etc.)." 


"About 90 percent of the people in the book are people I only really knew a little bit about," Meltz said. "It was so rad to spend time with people and kick off a 'Who are you, and how do we know each other?' convo."


At the end of the summer, with more than 100 photos in hand, Meltz launched a Kickstarter to turn his photos into an art show and a book. Incredibly, 143 backers pledged $6,922, knocking the $3,500 originally asked for out of the park.





What makes this project so unique is that, like the popular Humans of New York, it brings together a group of strangers and offers a literal snapshot into the lives of individuals we otherwise wouldn't see. The ethereal portraits in the work are also accompanied by the Twitter handle of the subject and a short description of who the person is and what they do.


At Meltz's art show/party in November, the photo subjects all gathered together in a sort of surreal melding of art and life. 



"There was a ton of overlap of who knows who and how," Meltz said of the group.


Meltz just received the first 200 books thanks to his Kickstarter funds and says he's likely going to sell the book to booksellers in late spring of this year, so you can be a friend of a friend too.


If you can't wait for the book and want to see more of Meltz's work, you can find him, unsurprisingly, on Twitter and Instagram @thecultureofme or here.



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The French Erotic Films You Should Know About This Valentine's Day

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What makes an erotic film an erotic film?


The distinction between pornography and today's romantic dramas, like "Fifty Shades of Grey" or "Nymphomaniac," can be slight. Erotic films could be viewed as the bridge between porn and romance, offering fans a "safer" viewing experience -- fit with not just sex, but a plot and well-developed characters, too -- than we might get from their soft-core cousins. Still, the genre remains pretty broad, expanding and condensing over the years to reflect the prevailing attitudes toward sex and love at the time.


"I would say that, overall, erotic films are most akin to the horror genre," Caryn Coleman, senior film programmer at Nitehawk Cinema in Brooklyn, New York, explained to The Huffington Post, "in that they are taboo, corporeal, and often subversively dealing with socio-political issues. Erotic film can be violating and liberating at the same time."


Coleman ought to know. She's the curator behind Nitehawk's "Naughties" series, a collection of screenings devoted to various corners of the erotic film universe. In the past, she's looked at the history of American porn in the early 1970s, and the Scandinavian films that influenced those American porn films. Now, she's landed on French erotic films. Her soon-to-launch installment of "Naughties" -- dubbed "Ooh La La" -- explores the ways sex manifests in French cinema, from the 1960s to the 2000s.





Coleman's nifty comparison, presenting erotica and horror as similar genres, might explain why "Naughties" has a sister series -- "Nasties" -- which focuses on the camp, gore and comedy built into horror films past. Both "Nasties" and "Naughties" veer entertainingly into the nether realms of subversive filmmaking, They seek to point out the less obvious traits of the slippery movie genres we've come to love.


"Many of the films that have been part of the 'Naughties' are very much about a woman’s sexuality and her journey to finding her sexual self," Coleman continued. "I think that, generally speaking, people automatically [think of] porn as it was in the 1980s on home video, and how today, with rare exception, it’s very much about male pleasure. That said, what the 'Naughties' looks at are pockets of cinema history where erotic and pornographic films had a narrative and how that story was quite often about a woman’s attempt at fulfillment."


As Valentine's Day approaches, what better time is there to educate yourself on the intricacies of French erotic films? Nitehawk's "Naughties" series opens this month, and Coleman gave us the scoop on all the screenings to come.


1. "Belle de Jour" (1967)





"Belle de Jour," directed by Luis Buñuel and starring the great Catherine Deneuve, is, in Coleman's words, about "a woman’s sexual exploration on her own terms."


Deneuve plays Severine, a married woman who, while chaste in the home she shares with her husband, begins exercising her decidedly kinky fantasies with other men, eventually turning to a day-life of sex work. She does so to explore her suppressed sexual proclivities, but also to "indulge in behavior that allows her to become herself," Coleman notes. While Severine is expected to be domestic and pure among her family and friends, she finds a way of embracing her identity as a sexual being and individual outside of them.


"'Belle de Jour' was one of Luis Buñuel’s biggest hits," Coleman explained, "even those who didn’t like his work raved about this film, and it’s probably the best known erotic film. It’s a complex film that somehow manages to weave together elements of surrealism, challenging societal norms, and a woman’s sexuality; it’s funny, it’s weird, and just naughty enough."


"Belle de Jour" is playing at Nitehawk on Wednesday, Feb. 10.


2. "Last Tango in Paris" (1972)





Bernardo Bertolucci's 1972 drama "Last Tango in Paris," starring Marlon Brando and Maria Schneider, tells the tragic story of an American widower and an engaged French woman who meet in an apartment they both wish to rent, soon embarking on an anonymous sexual affair -- they do not even share names with each other -- that seems to hinge upon their mutual desire for a casual encounter.... until it doesn't. 


Bertolucci ended up going on trial for the Oscar-nominated erotic film, deemed "obscenity" in his home country of Italy. So how has the censorship of erotic films changed in the last 40 years since "Last Tango"?


"I know that the import of Scandinavian films in the 1960s and 1970s into America certainly shaped film censorship laws and sparked that debate of what was acceptable to screen in public," Coleman replied. "But thinking outside of the porn industry and more on 'mainstream' films, it would seem that there is both a more conservative/censoring attitude toward sex in movies while audiences are also very accustomed to seeing sexual situations in films. Bertolucci did go on trial for 'self-serving pornography' -- how great is that phrase? -- while there is both an R and NC-17 U.S. cut for [Bertolucci's other film] 'The Dreamers.' So maybe we’re still not as evolved as we think."


"Last Tango in Paris" is playing at Nitehawk on Friday, July 8.


3. "The Dreamers" (2003)





Speaking of "The Dreamers," this is Bertolucci's more recent foray into taboo sexual journeys, in which an American exchange student meets two twins (one played by Eva Green) during the Parisian student protests of 1968. Matthew, the student, stays with the brother and sister, taking part in a polyamorous relationship that hints at incest among other supposed faux pas. "The sex in this movie is, as measured by the display of body parts and the amount of time the actors spend out of their clothes, more explicit than even the most notorious scenes in 'Last Tango,'" a New York Times review noted.


"Importantly, it is also a love letter to cinema itself," Nitehawk's website notes, "mimicking another infamous Parisian threesome film, Jean-Luc Godard’s 'Bande à part (Band of Outsiders).'"


"The Dreamers" is playing at Nitehawk on Friday, Sept. 2.


4. "Fascination" (1979)





"It’s pretty much impossible to try to write about a Jean Rollin film," Nitehawk's description begins, "they are much better suited to explain themselves." Perhaps it's best to just tease this one -- which lends itself to quick modifiers like "erotic horror" and "lesbian vampire movie." The plot, in short, centers on a thief who attempts to hide out in a castle owned by two women (Eva and Elizabeth) who are part of an aristocratic vampire cult. 


"Many of the films that have been part of the 'Naughties' are very much about a woman’s sexuality and her journey to finding her sexual self," Coleman reiterated. "This is clear in 'Emmanuelle' and probably more so in Jean Rollin’s 'Fascination.' Those women are in control!"


"Fascination" is playing at Nitehawk on Friday, Aug. 5.


5. "Emmanuelle" (1974)





Another tale of sexual awakening abroad, Just Jaeckin's 1974 film is unabashedly soft-core porno, following the open relationship of a married man and young woman (played by Sylvia Kristel) that challenges the assumption that sex is tied to love. "The softcore drama sent Kristel's character through an endless whirl of skinny dipping, masturbation and the leg-over antics of the Mile High Club," a Guardian review explained. "But 'Emmanuelle''s hedonistic worldview struck a chord with mainstream '70s audiences. It went on to become one of the most successful French productions ever, earning upwards of $300m at the box office and famously playing at a cinema near the Arc de Triomphe for 11 years straight."


"'Emmanuelle' is one of those great mid-1970s films," Coleman added, "hazy, golden, saturated, elegant and seductive."


"Emmanuelle" is playing at Nitehawk on Friday, June 3.


Bonus: Even More Erotica





We asked Coleman to give us a few other French erotic film recommendations and she delivered: 



Well, if you like your French erotic films strange and bloody, then I would recommend watching every Jean Rollin film. He’s the master of erotic horror. In that vein, there’s also the cannibal erotic french film "Trouble Every Day," which will be the last of our 2016 "Nasties" series ("I Eat Cannibals") that conveniently transitions into the "Naughties" [series]. There’s also "Betty Blue" and "The Piano Teacher," too.



For more on "Naughties," check out Nitehawk's website.


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'Monsters, Inc.' Screenwriter Daniel Gerson Dead At 49

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Daniel Gerson, the screenwriter well known for "Monsters, Inc." died on Saturday, his family confirmed with an obituary on the New York Times' website. He was 49 years old.


According to the obit, Gerson died peacefully at his home after a battle with brain cancer. 


"Daniel expressed a unique zest for life, its big and little moments, and brought that spirit to all of his loved ones," the notice reads. "His sense of humor was exceptional. Beyond his creative talents, what distinguished Daniel was a profound commitment to honesty, fairness and concern for the less fortunate." 


Gerson grew up in New York and was involved in musical theatre performances in high school and college (Cornell University). He received an MFA from NYU film school and went on to work as a staff writer for the former NBC sitcom, "Something So Right."


The 49-year-old eventually transitioned into feature films and co-wrote "Monsters, Inc." for Pixar Animation Studios. 


Aside from "Monsters. Inc.," Gerson was also responsible for writing "Big Hero 6," which won an Oscar for Best Animated Feature in 2015. His other credits include Disney-Pixar's "Monsters University," "Up" and "Inside Out," as well as Sony's "Open Season." 


The screenwriter was currently working on "Cars 3," E! News reports. 


Gerson is survived by his wife, Beau Stacom, and his children, Claire and Asher. 


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School Announces Snow Day With Emotional 'Hello' Parody

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One year after his "Let It Go" snow day announcement went viral, a Rhode Island school administrator is canceling classes with another amazing parody.


Moses Brown School Head Matt Glendinning announced a snow day on Feb. 5 by channeling none other than Adele. His "Hello" parody gives the iconic sepia-toned video a snowy twist. 


The new version of the song includes lyrics like, "Don't forget to bundle because it's winter time," "I'm sorry, students, if it breaks your heart" and "You know it snowed a lot last night. And now it's just not safe to drive. So it's too late, school is closed for today."


This video is the latest in a seemingly unending series of "Hello" parodies. It seems the song is applicable to just about anything.


H/T Today


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'Orange Is The New Black' Actress Brings The Gay Military Struggle To The Stage

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“Orange is the New Black” actress Catherine Curtin sees her latest project, “Burning,” as a way to speak out against the injustices still faced by gay and lesbian service members in the U.S. military.


The off-Broadway play, which opened Feb. 7 at the Theatre at St. Clement’s in New York, is a modern retelling of Edmond Rostand’s 1897 drama, “Cyrano de Bergerac.” In it, Curtin stars as Cy, a woman who is kicked out of the army for being a lesbian. Despite a near-crippling sense of self-doubt that prevents her from pursuing love, Cy sets out to take on the world with words, blogging about her experiences as a gay woman in the military not far from the base where she last served. 


Written by Ginger Lazarus, “Burning” updates Rostand’s original by weaving in contemporary themes like gender inequality, military abuse and homophobia. The play, which is being presented by the Resonance Ensemble in repertory on alternating evenings with the original “Cyrano de Bergerac,” is giving Curtin a “powerful” opportunity to tackle those issues in a creative way. 


“I’m a New Yorker, and when you live in a city like this, you can’t help but get your goad up about a lot of things,” she told The Huffington Post in an interview. “Every day we see things in our society that are so blatantly terrible [and] I often feel very powerless. Being an actor and having a play that allows you to say, ‘There is justice and injustice,’ is very humbling.”



While the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy, which barred openly gay and lesbian people from serving in the U.S. military, was repealed in 2011, Curtin thinks the fight for true equality in the armed forces is far from over.


“That was a horror show for people and used against them in so many ways. But it was one way of laying down the law,” Curtin, who identifies as straight and is married to playwright Randal Myler, said. “I think that the men and women who suffered terribly under [the ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ policy]…I don’t know if they’re suffering less now. I don’t know that the military is a friendly place for people who are gay yet.”



With its lesbian protagonist, “Burning” is very much in line with Curtin’s best-known work on “Orange is the New Black,” which has been applauded for its LGBT-inclusive subject matter and cast. The actress, who plays correctional officer Wanda Bell on the smash Netflix series, said she is proud to represent the community as an artist through both projects.


“We can’t forget the struggle and the fight that gay men and women have been battling for so long. I watched too many of my friends have to make so many hard life choices because of their sexual orientation,” she said. “So my heart is very open to that [narrative], and that’s hopefully what I bring.”


"Burning" runs at the Theatre of St. Clement's in New York through Feb. 28. Head here for more details. 


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Meet The Syrian YouTube Star Who's Making Germany Laugh

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A Syrian refugee is showing Germany's locals and newcomers that the best way to understand each other is through humor.


Firas Alshater, a drama student and filmmaker, is the star of a new YouTube video series that explores German society from a refugee's point of view. The pilot was published on Jan. 27 by Zukar, a website that posts advice and tips for refugees who are new to Germany, and is titled "Who are those Germans?"


In the video, Alshater conducts a social experiment to test how ordinary Germans react to refugees. He stands, blindfolded, in the middle of Alexanderplatz, a large public square in Berlin, next to a sign in German that reads, "I am a Syrian refugee. I trust you -- do you trust me? Hug me!"


Alshater waited a long time for someone to hug him, but after one person did, many followed. Eventually, some 40 people had hugged him within an hour and a half, the filmmaker told The WorldPost.


"I learned that the Germans need a bit of time but then they can't be stopped," Alshater remarks at the end of the video. "That's why I believe the integration will be a success ... Eventually."



"I made this video to show people that Germans are different, and also that refugees are not the same and all of them are different," Alshater told The WorldPost. "You can't say that all Germans are Nazis, or all refugees are Firas, because we are all different people and all of us need time to get to know each other and to be together."


German society has become deeply divided over the migrant and refugee influx, which saw some 1.1 million people enter the country last year. According to a poll commissioned by state-owned broadcaster ZDF, the country's approval rating for German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who instituted an open-door refugee policy, has plummeted to 46 percent, or its lowest point in five years.


Alshater says his video, which has garnered almost 400,000 views on YouTube and Facebook combined, has even gained the support of people who were against welcoming refugees into the country. "Someone said, 'I am normally against refugees but you surprised me, and I want to follow you and see what you will do next,'" he noted.



Alshater may be only 24, but he's been through a lot. He was arrested and placed in jail for nine months after he attended and helped organize many demonstrations in the Syrian capital of Damascus against the regime of President Bashar Assad, the filmmaker recalled in "Syria Inside," a 2013 documentary about the Syrian revolution. There, he was tortured with electroshocks and beaten with cables, and officers stubbed cigarettes out on his body.


Upon his release, Alshater moved to the north of Syria to work as a freelance reporter and photographer, and arrived in Berlin in May 2013 to work on a film with a German production company. He told The WorldPost that he hadn't planned to stay in Germany for long at the time, but later decided to apply for asylum in the country as the self-described Islamic State grew in dominance in Syria's north, where he lived.


He was granted asylum six months later, in November 2013. Alshater noted that the asylum process in Germany likely takes much longer today.



Now, Alshater is preparing to start studying this fall at the Konrad Wolf Academy, a film school outside Berlin in Potsdam. He will also make at least 10 more videos for Zukar, Jan Heilig, the series' co-producer, confirmed.


"We will try always to make people laugh, to make people happy," Alshater said. "We will try to see what is going on in the news and make it in a funny way. As long as people like and love my videos, we will continue."


On Friday, the funnyman released a second video on the Zukar channel, as part of #YouGeHa, a YouTube campaign that addresses racism and xenophobia in Germany. In the video, Alshater demonstrates the difficulty of seeking asylum In Germany -- through cats.


"I don't have a problem with cats," he jokes. "But they are granted asylum everywhere! They just need to sit at the door and say, 'Meow!' and someone will come and open up. If I do that, no one will open up."


 


More on refugees and migrants in Europe


A Thousand Miles In Their Shoes


German Doctor Pens Moving Account Of Treating Refugees


Refugees Write Moving Letter In Response To Sexual Assaults In Cologne


Why Taking in Refugees Is Still The Right Thing To Do


 


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Robert Rodriguez's Directing Career Has Been All About Diversity

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Gina Rodriguez has kept her promise to highlight Latino talent in Hollywood through her weekly "Movement Mondays" posts on Instagram.


The "Jane The Virgin" star already featured "Star Wars" star Oscar Isaac and "Maze Runner" actress Rosa Salazar, and this week she's highlighting director Robert Rodriguez.


The director broke into Hollywood after making his award-winning student film "El Mariachi" with only $7,000. Since then he's helmed cult classics like "Desperado" and "From Dusk Till Dawn" and franchises like "Spy Kids" and "Machete."


But it's the director's ongoing effort to "uplift" Latinos in the industry that became the focal point of the actress' post on Monday



#MovementMondays This is Robert Rodriguez. He is a Mexican American director, film producer, screenwriter, film editor, cinematographer, musician and now runs his own network. El Rey network, currently airing outstanding shows such as Dusk Till Dawn. Robert is known for his films From dusk till dawn, Grindhouse, Machete, Sin city, Spy Kids, Desperado and more. He is an advocate of hiring Latino artists both in front of and behind the cameras and by doing so Robert is preparing many Latinos for the Hollywood Industry. By hiring Latino directors and writers he is giving them opportunities to enter the industry as professionals with great work on their resume, prepared for success. He is hiring Latino actors for roles we seldom get the opportunity to play. Having artists in his position of power and utilizing it to advance the community is why Robert is my #movementMondays we can uplift one another and use our opportunities to hold the doors open for others. Let us support El Rey Network and the many shows coming out of that network so that Robert may continue to hire and put Latinos on the map! I am inspired and in awe of this amazing trailblazer! Let us lead by example, extend your blessings to others so that they too may succeed and in turn they will help others succeed. The chain effect can be great and not only do we create more positive and productive artists but ones that have the desire to open doors for others! Strength in unity. #MovementMondays

A photo posted by Gina Rodriguez (@hereisgina) on





He is an advocate of hiring Latino artists both in front of and behind the cameras and by doing so Robert is preparing many Latinos for the Hollywood Industry. By hiring Latino directors and writers he is giving them opportunities to enter the industry as professionals with great work on their resume, prepared for success. He is hiring Latino actors for roles we seldom get the opportunity to play. Having artists in his position of power and utilizing it to advance the community is why Robert is my#movementMondays we can uplift one another and use our opportunities to hold the doors open for others.



And the director has said he makes a conscious effort to cast Latino actors in his films, which has led him to giving actors like Antonio Banderas, Salma Hayek and Danny Trejo their big breaks in Hollywood.


While accepting the San Antonio Association of Hispanic Journalists' Corazón de Oro award in August 2014, the director gave an impassioned speech on the need for more Latino talent in Hollywood and his career-long search for it since he found so few Latino actors to appear in his 1995 film "Desperado."


“I was shocked to find there were just no Latinos working in Hollywood [at the time],” Rodriguez said in his inspiring speech. “I mean there were just none. So I realized I had to create my own star system. Because anything I was going to write was going to have a Hispanic in it, because you write in your own image.”


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J.K. Rowling Has An Uplifting Message For Fan Fighting 'Dementors' Of Depression

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J.K. Rowling has cast another spell, this time helping a young fan in a battle against the "dementors" of depression. 


On Sunday night, an 18-year-old fan from Brazil named Marina who uses the Twitter handle "pale emo nerd" sent out a series of increasingly distressing tweets, tagging the "Harry Potter" author in the first one: 


































Dementors "glory in decay and despair, they drain peace, hope and happiness out of the air around them," according to a description in the book "Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban." They can suck good feelings and happy memories out of their victims, and were drawn from the author's own battles with depression


Rowling delivered the perfect response for handling life's dementors in a single tweet:






That, in turn, caused Potterheads around the world to send messages of encouragement:


 






























The spell appears to have worked like a charm. Marina retweeted many of the encouraging responses and added a few thoughts of her own: 










Rowling has always been supportive of her fans, and last year sent out a series of tweets to encourage one who wanted to "finally give up." 


 


Need help? In the U.S., call 1-800-273-8255 for the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline. Outside of the U.S., please visit the International Association for Suicide Prevention for a database of international resources.


 


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