Photograph by Abe Mora Lightswitch, the six-track EP from New Zealand-based Persian rapper, CHAII, draws upon her visual art background and comes paired with six highly-stylized music videos that span continents. Including a three-part series shot in Oman -- which involves a rich roster of local residents and aims to portray...
In the directorial debut of their feature film, Borrufa, Portland-based artist, performer, and filmmaker Roland Dahwen presents a quiet portrait of the trials and tribulations faced by immigrant families in the United States. Poetically and ambiguously named, Borrufa is shot on Super 16mm film stock and unconventional by most mainstream filmmaking...
It’s an unassuming video. Just 17 minutes in length and made up of exactly what it’s title promises, Stack Until it Falls Down is redundant, slow, and rather dull. It’s also hypnotic, soothing, and exactly the meditation we all need right now. Born out of the COVID-19 lockdown that fundamentally altered...
When Moroni Benally signs the paperwork to run for Navajo Nation president, he giggles. Moroni For President, a charming documentary profile of his 2014 campaign, captures the high stakes of the race to become the leader of the Navajo Nation, the largest Native American territory by landmass and population. Moroni,...
Two months following the tragic and unexpected passing of independent filmmaker Lynn Shelton -- known for such films as Sword of Trust (2019), Laggies (2014), and Humpday (2009) -- Duplass Brothers Productions and Seattle's Northwest Film Forum announced the Lynn Shelton Of a Certain Age Grant in July 2020. In...
Homebound in quarantine during the early stages of Italy's COVID-19 outbreak, musician Bruno Bavota composed Apartment Loops Vol. 1 -- an EP that reflected not despair and hopelessness, but Bavota's unexpected bout of inspiration after lockdown. He traded in his solo piano compositions for synthesizers and woke up early each...
Welcome to Virgo season. It’s a time of transition, fraught with the frisson of both inevitable endings and fresh beginnings. There’s a pervasive undercurrent of things needing to be done. Virgo’s symbol, the maiden, is quite possibly one of the most misunderstood in the zodiac. After all, what exactly is the...
At The Atlantic Festival, a 2019 conference put on by The Atlantic, an interviewer asked Maria Ressa, CEO of the Filipino news site, Rappler, why Americans should care about the deteriorating political situation in the Philippines. Her response? "What happens in America happens in the rest of the world." Ressa...
Alternatingly celebratory and apocalyptic, moon Over miami -- a collaborative album curated by Archival Feedback, a long-time duo consisting of Emile Milgrim and T. Wheeler Castillo -- subverts the old standard of the same name with a series of remixes and re-imaginings. Written in 1935 by songwriters Joe Burke and...
"Capitalism drove our expansion westward, leaving an enormous human and environmental cost in its wake. However, the myths surrounding our settling of the west will have you believe something totally different, entwining these events with American values of ‘freedom’ and ‘independence.’ Our history of settling the West is both a...
In the cinematic music video for “Wine,” Canadian Chinese singer Carson Cheng — also known as KICCC (pronounced “kick”) — emerges from hot ashes like a phoenix and finds himself face-to-face with a white wolf in the woods. The dramatic result of a creative exchange between KICCC and director Brock...
Cinescopes is a monthly column about astrology and the movies. Ruled by the Sun itself, Leo is fixed fire. If cardinal energy (like Cancer's) is about initiation, fixed energy is about holding on, holding steady, and holding it down. If water signs (like Cancer) are the deep feelers, fire signs...