Controversial all-female Rumba, taking selfies amidst the Californian fires, & animated punk-angst. Vids to bench-test your soul
Time for some imaginative refresh, by means of digital culture’s cornucopia of options… As Micheal Caine didn’t quite say: we need to blow the bloody doors of perception off, sometimes…
Above (courtesy of Aeon’s curation) is a short but resonant documentary titled Uproar, about female-led rumba music in Cuba. From Aeon below:
Emerging from the poor districts of Havana and Matanzas in the 19th century, today rumba is one of Cuba’s most popular art forms. Influenced by African and Spanish traditions of music and dance, its distinctive, syncopated sound requires masterful musicianship and fierce passion from its performers. But, despite being born of marginalisation and oppression, modern Cuban rumba culture is, in many ways, still deeply conservative. Indeed, some of its most prominent practitioners view it as unladylike, even borderline blasphemous, for women to drum in rumba bands.
In Uproar, the London-based filmmaker Moe Najati profiles Rumba Morena, a controversial all-female rumba group shaking up Cuba’s music scene. A collection of talented, self-taught women, Rumba Morena is out to prove that drumming skills and femininity aren’t mutually exclusive. With the expressive sounds and vivid hues of Havana’s streets shaping the scenes, Uproar uses rumba as a jumping off point for a broader exploration of Cuban society and culture – in all its many complexities and contradictions.
Reality is stranger than fiction, but in the case of recent California wildfires, reality is closer to horror. According to the LA Times, the region has seen record breaking fires with eight of the 10 largest fires in history burning just in the last decade.
When filmmaker Quinn Else decided to capture the fires as research for a horror film, he discovered something unexpected — next to news teams and firefighters, everyday people pulled out their phones, stood eerily close to the destruction, and hit record.
Filmed between 2017 and 2020, this week’s haunting Staff Pick Premiere “Fire Season,” observes how technology alters our perception of the natural world. As if framing the events through their screens offers a sense of control in an otherwise uncontrollable situation, the bystander’s calm nonchalance stands in striking contrast to their surroundings.
The film is cleverly narrated by a robotic smartphone voiceover which adds yet another layer into the already bizarre situation while proving basic facts about the fires.
As California braces for another potentially disastrous wildfire season, “Fire Season” is a striking reminder of how easily fear and awe are filtered into clickbait content and passive acceptance becomes normalized.
From Creative Review:
Coming in at over eight minutes long, the video for the song Pamphlets, by Squid, explores “the feeling of being unfit, unlovable, not compatible and the manic anxiety and stress that this results in,” according to Djafari
The video centres on a character who struggles to engage with the world he sees going past his window. “I wanted to explore a state of mind that I have found myself in many times, of fearing to go outside and being confronted with everything that one cannot love about themselves,” says Djafari.
The director depicts the character’s suffering through beautiful and compelling design and animation, which amply articulate his pain. Says Djafari: “This is a video that relates to my own experiences as well as it is a solidarisation with everyone that has been made to feel this way.”