Each actor played his or her role with passion and zeal. You won’t get any complaints on that end, especially, Kimberly Elise and Thandie Newton, two actresses I love no matter what. Tyler Perry gets kudos for his efforts, even if I couldn’t figure out why Kimberly Elise couldn’t have just reprinted the missing page from Janet’s report, instead of having to go all the way back home to retrieve her copy. I mean seriously, the movie was set in current times, right? But I digress.

So what is my issue? Simply put, as a colored, black, African-American, (woman) I am so over seeing us depicted in these negative, depressing roles and movies. It has been made perfectly clear to the world that awful things have and do happen in our communities, but they also happen in other communities, yet we are the only ones who seem to want to hold on to the misery. Rape, incest, molestation, and abuse are all horrible acts and I cannot begin to understand what it must feel like to live with those experiences, so I am by no means downplaying what many women (and men) have gone through. I just don?t see how these movies help.

People have said, If you read the book or seen the stage play, you would have known what to expect. I disagree, as a teenager, reading the book for the first time in the late 70s, I felt the poems were liberating, and showed women as strong and resilient. In my late 30s, watching the young girls of the Pinellas Youth Arts Corp. perform the poems on stage, I was proud that our kids were being exposed to great literature. But as a woman in my 40s, I am over the oppressed black woman syndrome. We are so much more than movies like this portray us to be. I am tired of black women being seen as victims, whores and co-dependent upon men who do nothing but use them as sex objects and/or punching bags.

A status post on Facebook asked the question, Which character was the most powerful? Powerful, there was that word again. There is no power in staying in an abusive relationship or trying to reason with insanity–an insanity that leads to the death of your children. Power, surely isn’t in being a nosey busybody, eavesdropping into the lives of your neighbors through paper thin walls. Being a doormat for a man who takes more than he gives is actually giving your power away. Sorry ladies, they don’t steal our stuff, we hand it to them freely, price-tag still attached in case, after trying it out he decides he wants to exchange it for something else. Powerless describes what it must feel like to be raped or molested, but to allow that act to dim your light, gives the aggressor your power. Maybe success to some makes a woman powerful; however, if she has everything on the outside but on the inside she’s cold and lonely, just can’t see the power in that either.

Amazing, okay, on second thought, maybe there was something amazing about the movie. It was amazing that every male character in the movie, with the exception of one, was depicted as a detriment to the woman in his life. We had the abuser turned murderer, the rapist, the whoremonger, and the down-low brother, you know, your everyday stereotype of the black man. Even the dead black man had his role as the incestuous child molester. Thank God for Hill Harper, who played the sensitive, caring, husband, who loved his wife so much that when she shared how she got the STD that would prevent them from having children, he didn’t even flinch, just took her into his arms and let her know everything would be okay. Some women probably missed that because we aren’t supposed to be loved, and what black woman could appreciate this type of man anyway. Hey, I’m just following the black woman’s script.

Today I watched Love & Basketball for the umpteenth time. I love this movie and movies like it. Love Jones, The Best Man, and Brown Sugar, to name a few. Movies that demonstrate black men loving them some black women. Is it too much to ask for? Is it true that no one wants to go to the movies and watch black people being happy, being successful and happy, and celebrating each other, in love with each other? Is it not possible for a black woman to be received as Katherine Heigl and Jennifer Aniston, in all those silly, boy meets girl, movies? Can we not be taken as serious as Angelina Jolie in action movies? I simply refuse to believe that our only real value to Hollywood is as the downtrodden, used and abused, whoa is me, just another sad story, black woman. Or maybe, just maybe, being colored is a metaphysical dilemma that we simply cannot conquer.

Much Love,

Tracy

Tracy L. Darity is the author of two novels, He Loves Me He Loves Me Not! and Love… Like Snow In Florida On A Hot Summer Day.  For more information visit www.TracyLDarity.com

Until recently, I was on the fence about genetically-modified food. I have some background in agricultural science and I’ve heard lecturers time and again which cite historical precedent: “We’ve been genetically engineering food for thousands of years through selective breeding, so what’s wrong with doing the same thing with modern technology? Genetically-modified organisms can feed a hungry world!” This isn’t wrong, but it’s an incomplete picture.

Percy Schmeiser: David vs. Monsanto is a film about the impact of genetically-modified crops, but it’s also about farmers’ rights. Shouldn’t a farmer be allowed to use the seed harvested from their own crop? What happens when through no fault of your own, your organic crop gets crossbred with pollen from a patented genetic strain?

This happened to Percy Schmeiser, who spent a large portion of this decade fighting the Goliath of this story: Monsanto, a multinational corporation whose genetically-engineered crops have overtaken the grain supply. Monsanto sued Schmeiser and other farmers whose crops were accidentally crossbred. They’ve also accused many farmers of illegally using seed from the previous crop, which is forbidden if you buy Monsanto’s product. The documentary discusses the idea of patenting a gene and the potential allergens introduced by the modifications.

Genetically-modified food is only similar to the original article, not the same, and we have no idea of the long term ramifications. History teaches us that monoculture, only growing one particular strain of a plant, can have negative consequences. When a disease takes out that genetic strain, you’re left with a famine. Organic farms and farmers using the seed from their own crops year after year ensures genetic diversity.

It’s a complicated issue and one that every individual has to resolve for themselves, but if you’re at all human you’ll smile when Schmeiser lobs a pebble between Monsanto’s eyes.

Another food-related documentary lays out the story of corporate greed. The End of The Line is about overfishing. This isn’t a new topic, a children’s movie featuring overfishing as the main problem came out a couple years ago, but this documentary presents the horror of it in a straightforward, believable way.

Fish are being taken from the ocean too fast for them to replenish their populations. The international regulatory body governing fishing has set a limit, still more than most populations can bear, but that number is being cheerfully ignored. Restaurants serve endangered and threatened fish, some condescending to put a note warning that they’re endangered on the menu.

Fish farming is not an option if we’re talking about predatory fish like salmon or tuna. In order to produce a pound of fish, the fish has to be fed five times that. Salmon are predators, which means they have to be fed other fish. These fish are caught in the wild and not farm-grown. In addition, if a farmed fish escapes and breeds with a wild fish, the resulting hybrid is something that’s not adapted for its environment.

The End of the Line emphasizes personal responsibility and choice, and not all hope is lost for seafood lovers. Wal-Mart is moving towards only selling sustainably caught fish, and McDonalds reports that 90% of their fish sandwiches are sustainably produced.

Eating lower on the foodchain is a safe bet: filter-feeders like clams, oysters and mussels are lower-impact than tuna, as are shrimp, anchovies and sardines. You can also switch to freshwater fish like catfish and tilapia. Both of those species are also omnivorous, so they can be farmed without having to be fed other fish.

I spoke briefly to producer Claire Lewis after the film and asked about alternate protein sources. Cattle are a surprisingly large source of greenhouse emissions and large farming operations have a big environmental impact. She laughed a little and said “Well, vegetarianism is the way of the future.”

All in all, I had a great time at the film festival. I’ve learned a great deal about education, human rights, music, organic farming and sustainability, and even had my mind changed about a few things. The festival’s goals included encouraging action via the medium of film, and I would say that they’ve accomplished that. I can’t wait to do this again next year.

The festival kicked off with a street fair the weekend prior, but began in earnest on Thursday night on the main lawn at Rollins College with music, poetry and a screening of Throw Down Your Heart.

Throw Down Your Heart is a documentary that follows notable banjo player Bela Fleck on a journey through Africa. The banjo originated as an African instrument and Fleck visits four different countries, playing with local musicians and learning about the local cultures. It showcases the beauty of Africa and the importance of music in daily life. Fleck often communicates through a translator, but when he and the local musicians start to play they’re speaking the same language.

The idea of music as a universal language isn’t unusual, but harmony isn’t just a musical concept. Picture the most complicated board game you’ve ever played, like you left a Risk board and a three-dimensional chess set in a closet for a year and somehow they made a baby. That’s the World Peace Game, a tool that educator John Hunter uses to teach conflict resolution in World Peace and Other Fourth Grade Achievements.

The World Peace Game is like an extrapolated version of the prisoner’s dilemma, a classic problem in game theory. It explains why people often don’t cooperate even when there’s a positive outcome. In the prisoner’s dilemma, there are two prisoners with evidence. If one gives evidence against the other, the betrayer will get better treatment, the betrayed will get worse. If both give evidence, both lose, and if both cooperate and withhold evidence they’re both treated well. In other words, the only way a person can benefit from betraying is if they know the other will not. Mutual cooperation is the key to victory.

In The World Peace Game, the game is only won when everyone wins. This means that all of the crises in the world are solved and every nation has a significantly larger budget than that with which it began. The game itself is staged on a multi-level board, with the land in the middle, oil and coal below, air and space above. Players are divided into national leaders and their staff, arms dealers, leaders of displaced minorities and international banks. It’s staged in weekly sessions for an eight-week term.

The documentary itself is about Hunter’s story leading into his creation of the game, interspersed with the children playing it. Every session of the game begins with a reading from Sun Tzu’s Art of War, a book which Hunter repeatedly says is “about staying out of war, or getting out as quickly as possible.” Hunter then explains the conditions of the game world, what disasters have hit and where armies are deployed.

Hunter describes his roll as firefighter rather than lecturer. He guides the children and gives them enough information to come to their own conclusions, and when conflict reaches a tipping point he comes in and douses the flames. Despite having more world crises to solve than any previous group with which Hunter had run the game, the children won the game.

This was possibly the most uplifting film of the festival. Hunter was in attendance at this screening and answered questions afterward. Most were about potential future applications of the game. I wanted to play, and felt a little deprived that we never had anything like this in my school! Hunter says that he’s been in talks to produce the game and potentially create an online edition.

For all that World Peace… was uplifting, My Kidnapper was unpleasant. It’s not a happy story: Mark Henderson was one of eight hikers kidnapped while on a hiking expedition in Columbia. He was freed after several months living in sub-human conditions. Years later, one of his kidnappers emailed him.

Over the course of the film it’s revealed that the kidnappers were members of a group of Marxist radicals hoping to draw attention to human rights violations in Columbia. The kidnappers seem unable to see the irony of taking away someone’s freedom to draw attention to human rights abuses.

After Henderson and one of his fellow kidnapping survivors communicated with their captors for some time, they and another two survivors go back to Columbia to revisit where it began. They visit the place they’d been hiking, the places they’d been held, and while they’re doing so their various coping strategies for the ordeal come to the surface. Two of the survivors look back on it with humor, but Henderson is still haunted.

This was also the only point where the film festival was anything less than professional. The DVD repeatedly skipped and paused. This film didn’t come with a scene selection option and we had to wait while a staff member fast-forwarded. It paused again close to the end of the film and the staffers gave up, so that particular screening didn’t show the end. I have no idea if this was corrected at a later screening.

Three different films spanning very different parts of the world, all about communication. We can connect through music or games or try and fail to understand one another, but the fact that we’ve tried at all is reason to feel hopeful about the world. That makes the Global Peace Film Festival a success in my eyes.

“I think this year is our strongest program,” said Executive Director Nina Streich. The films varied from documentaries, feature films, shorts, and animation. All were made to expose viewers to a wide number of social, cultural, and economic issues affecting the world today.

“It is our idea that this festival tell stories from all over the world; not just stories that address issues of poverty and injustice, but also stories that offer a peaceful alternative,” said Streich.

“Another Planet,” a narrative feature film directed by Ferenc Moldovanyl, originating from Hungary and Finland. The film was artistically shot by Tibor Mathe in four different continents in countries including Cambodia, Colombia, and Ecuador. The film features seven interwoven stories that are connected by different crises poverty-stricken countries face today. All feature a child who are expected to earn a living for their families by prostitution, fighting, or garbage-sifting.

“We didn’t actually look for this film, this film looked for us,” commented Streich. The film has appeared in over 80 festivals around the world, and ten within the United States.

Attendees paid an $8 fee to attend each screening. Tickets were available for purchase online as well as at the door of the venue. Movies were shown at the Plaza Cinema Cafe, the Winter Park Public Library, the Gallery at Avalon Island, and two auditoriums in Rollins College.

The event was sponsored by Orange County Cultural Affairs.

More information regarding the festival can be found at: http://peacefilmfest.org.

Peace is a broad subject. The past several days have included panels, documentaries and question and answer sessions with filmmakers. Topics broached have been everything from small interpersonal conflicts in a motel resort in Wisconsin to the problem of overfishing and the eventual human-caused mass extinctions, to the way a teacher passes the idea of conflict resolution, to the traumas of kidnap victims and their relationships with their former captors.

I was lucky enough to get to several days of the film festival, where I saw a number of films and participated in some of their question and answer sessions. It was an experience I’d happily repeat!

Rollins College has a lovely campus, the volunteers and staff were helpful and well-informed, and the films themselves were compelling even where the material might have been dry.

At the time of this writing the festival is still in progress, so more reports will be forthcoming!

Citing increased competition and the explosion of new media, the House Finance and Tax Council on Thursday approved a series of tax incentives backers say are necessary to lure lucrative contracts to the state.

If not, the state will find itself on the cutting room floor as other states push ahead with aggressive campaigns to land not only feature films, TV and commercials, but a host of new media from digital games to special effects that can be created anywhere.

“We need to do this now,” said House sponsor Rep. Stephen Precourt, R-Orlando. “Our neighbors are having to go to other states to find work.”

Toward that end, the panel unanimously approved HB 697, which would allow the state to issue up to $75 million in corporate income and sales tax credits to qualified entertainment enterprises. The credits could be used to offset costs of production and materials.

The bill would distribute available funds among a handful of general areas including commercial and music videos and independent productions.  The credits would be transferable.

In a nod to the state’s tough financial picture, the measure converts current cash incentives to transferable tax credits that won’t be redeemable until 2011. Precourt cautioned that foot dragging on the part of the Legislature would have immediate consequences in what has become an increasingly aggressive competition among states to land entertainment industry business.

“The new media clusters are beginning to form,” Precourt told the committee. “We need to make a conscious decision to stay in the business or not.”

Testimony from Paul Sirmons, a line producer for the upcoming faith-based feature film “Letter to God,” said the filmmaker, Possibility Productions Pictures, appeared to bear that out.

Six months after spending $3 million in the Orlando area during a 28-day shoot, Sirmons said the company has plans and the financing on hand to produce two more filims. Where the company chooses to do that will depend on what lawmakers do in the next several weeks.

” We hope to make those pictures in Florida,” Sirmons said. “There are too many other states that have incentives. It would be too much of savings for us to turn it down.”

A similar bill, SB 1430, was approved by the Senate Commerce Committee on Wednesday. Film incentive are also included in SB 1752, a comprehensive job creation package sponsored by Sen. Don Gaetz, R-Niceville. That measure passed the Senate 38-0 earlier Thursday.

The Nigerian film industry has overtaken Hollywood and closed the gap on India, the global leader in the number of movies produced each year, according to a new United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) report released today.

According to the UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS) survey, Bollywood – as the Mumbai-based film industry is known – produced 1,091 feature-length films in 2006. In comparison, Nigeria’s moviemakers, commonly known as Nollywood, came out with 872 productions – all in video format – while the United States produced 485 major films.

“Film and video production are shining examples of how cultural industries, as vehicles of identity, values and meanings, can open the door to dialogue and understanding between peoples, but also to economic growth and development,” said UNESCO Director-General Koïchiro Matsuura.

“This new data on film and video production provides yet more proof of the need to rethink the place of culture on the international political agenda,” he added.

The three cinema heavyweights were followed by eight countries that produced more than 100 films: Japan (417), China (330), France (203), Germany (174), Spain (150), Italy (116), South Korea (110) and the United Kingdom (104).

Key to Nollywood’s explosive success is Nigerian filmmakers’ reliance on video instead of film, reducing production costs, and, as the survey points out, the West African country has virtually no formal cinemas, with about 99 per cent of screenings in informal settings, such as home theatres.

The survey also revealed that about 56 per cent of Nollywood films are made in local languages, while English remains a prominent language, accounting for 44 per cent, which may contribute to Nigeria’s success in exporting its films.

According to the study, US movies continue to dominate cinema admissions around the world, and all of the top ten films seen in Australia, Bulgaria Canada, Costa Rica, Namibia, Romania, and Slovenia were US made.

Nigeria surpasses Hollywood as world’s second largest film producer – UN

The 45-year-old Brit has been in critical condition at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York since Tuesday. She was flown there from Montreal, Canada after suffering a skiing accident on Monday.

Family members, including her husband Liam Neeson and mother Vanessa Redgrave, have maintained a vigil by her bedside, as various news reports surfaced, suggesting the actress was “brain dead,” and being kept alive by a machine.

No official statement has been released, but respected writer Smith, who has close ties to the movie and theater industries, is reporting Richardson’s death on her new blog Wowowow.com.

The 86 year old writes, “Word is in at 1:30 PM WEDNESDAY they have taken Natasha off of life support. This is not unexpected.

Reports: Natasha Richardson Taken Off Life Support

The anxious millions were watching the multi-star Oscar awards ceremony at the Kodak Theater in Hollywood. Their patience was rewarded, and their prayers were answered. “Slumdog Millionaire,” a film about Mumbai and ordeals more familiar than terrorist strikes to the less-fortunate citizens of the country’s financial capital, made a spectacular sweep, winning eight awards, including two for iconic music composer A. R. Rahman.

The collective sigh of relief over the repeated honor for the film – which had earlier won the Golden Globe and British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) awards – was more than audible over the media. But that did not avert a controversy on the message and meaning of the film and the awards.

Whether it is an Indian film or not is not the most important question to be raised. British director Danny Boyle made it, but it was made in India and with an Indian cast about an Indian subject. A more serious debate has raged over the way the film projects India to the outside world.

The saga of the slum kid, who wins a fortune in fairytale style in a television quiz program and wins back his love too in the bargain, has been described as a salute to Mumbai’s spirit and decried as a slap on India’s face as well. Both sides have adopted unconsciously ironical stances in the bitter exchanges on the subject.

People who have had no problem whatsoever with India’s strategic partnership with the George Bush administration, for example, have espied a deep and diabolical imperialist conspiracy in “Slumdog.” Conversely, sections of the media which endorsed the right-wing poll slogan of a “shining India” in the past have evinced the same enthusiasm about selling the film with the slum as its soul.

The contradictions are easy to crack. Behind the great importance both sides attach to the film is its impact on India’s place in globalization as they perceive it. Adversaries of “Slumdog” see it as an attempt at denigrating India and denying its status as an emerging “superpower” and all associated goodies, including multinational investments and military alliances of a matching kind. Media supporters of “Slumdog,” on the other hand, see the film and the Oscars as adding further glitter to its globalized image.

Bollywood (as the Bombay cinema industry is known) has produced other films based on the Mumbai slum and its children. The most unforgettable, perhaps, is “Boot Polish” (1954), about the city’s shoe shining boys. “Slumdog,” however, presents starker images of poverty and squalor. It does indulge in exaggerations, but few can deny the facts of deprivation and exploitation that the director is dealing with.

Trying to defend the film in terms acceptable even to its trenchant critics, Rahman has said that it is “all about the power of hope in life.” But there are hopes and hopes.

In the beautiful lines of a song in “Boot Polish,” an avuncular friend of child workers asks them: “Hum se na chhupao bachho humein bhi batao,/ Aane wali duniya kaise hogi samjhao. (Don’t hide it from me, kids; tell me, too, what the coming world will be like.)” And, in a rousing chorus, they reply: “Aane wali duniya mein sab ke sar pe taaj hoga, …./badlega zamanaa ye sitaron mein likha hai (In the coming world, every head will wear a crown, …./ The times will change, this is written in the stars.)”

Contrast these lines with the crucial ones of “Jai Ho,” the climactic song in “Slumdog Millionaire.” As translated evocatively by unnamed authors in a blog called Inkspillz, the lines say: “Iota by iota, I have lost my life, in faith,/ I’ve passed this night dancing on coals,/ I blew away the sleep that was in my eyes,/ I counted the stars till my finger burned, …./ Taste it, taste it, this night is honey,/ Taste it, and keep it,/ It’s the heart, the heart is the final limit…./ Come, come my Life, under the canopy,/ Come under the blue brocade sky!”

There is a difference between a hope for the children of Indian slums and the hope for some fortunate individuals of the fraternity. There is all the difference, of course, between revolutionary hope from social change and the rags-to-riches hope of a fairytale romance.

But isn’t there hope, too, that the latter can lead back to the kind of hope left behind? The Oscar winner can perhaps serve to prompt, in however small a way, revival of socio-political concern over the rights of the urban poor.

“Slumdog,” after all, has hit the screen at a time when pre-emptive wars and unchecked profiteering have revived ideas of presumed obsolescence in a “post-ideology” period. It is not only in developing countries that ghettos deserve a place in the globalization debate.