Arts Express: Ava DuVernay, Jason Stuart, Paterson, The Healthcare Blues

**The 13TH At The NY Film Festival: A Conversation With Director Ava DuVernay: "A revolution is happening, and nobody knows about it." From redesigning slave labor via legislated criminalization, and privatized mass incarceration, and  inmate bondage enriching corporations, to the slave labor prison strikes sweeping the country.

LISTEN TO THE SHOW HERE

**Jason Stuart Talks The Birth Of A Nation: And getting inside the head of a slave owner he plays, 'dead inside, never questioning anything, and accepting the world as is. The  actor and comedian is on the line from LA.
  
**NY Film Festival: The Workingclass Artist In Economic Hard Times - Paterson. Directed by Jim Jarmusch. The poet as self-effacing whimsical working stiff and youth today left behind, in a soci-economic portrait of our time.

**Arts Express Best Of The Net Hotspot: The Health Care Blues. Carpenter and Arts Express listener Tom Rowley out of our affiliate station in the rural Missouri Ozarks, has produced a mass movement video about the current health care crisis, and the working poor without adequate access to medical care.

Arts Express: Thursdays 2pm ET: Airing on WBAI Radio in NY 99.5 FM, and streaming live and archived everywhere at wbai.org.

Prairie Miller

NY Film Festival 2016: Ava DuVernay's THE 13TH

 **THE 13TH

Ava DuVernay's breathlessly explosive documentary THE 13TH burrows into the devastating and heartbreaking legacy of racial injustice, incarceration and sanctioned murders of African Americans throughout US history - and even as this essential documentary plays out on screen this week, as the first ever documentary with the extraordinary acclaim as Opening Night feature of the NY Film Festival.

The director of the Oscar nominated Civil Rights Movement drama SELMA, has created with THE 13TH a simultaneously explosively informative and emotionally spellbinding documentary that is a crushing indictment of the 13th Amendment of the title. Presumably ending slavery but in fact reviving the brutal horrors through its disgraceful escape clause - "neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime" - leading to the millions in 'monetized' mass incarceration in the multi-billion dollar accelerating corporate prisons for profit, and slave labor for consumer goods corporations. Exploiting  inmate slavery fed by the nationwide criminalization of the African American community - when not their outright slaughter across the nation today. And slavery in fact not ended, but 'redesigned' to enrich corporations.

LISTEN TO THE SHOW HERE

And by extension, a concept as well that with the increasingly essential and critical importance of documentaries like THE 13TH, that the Oscars will hopefully recognize this film category's importance. And that documentaries should and must take their place to qualify for awards in the Best Film and Best Director categories in the future.


**NY FILM FESTIVAL EXPLORATIONS SECTION: THE DEATH OF LOUIS XIV

Though human beings born without privilege or status tend to take meager comfort in the inevitability that everyone is eventually equal in death, that path leading to mortality may very well be a different matter behind closed doors. And though Catalan writer/director Albert Serra is more than obsessed in making this grim when not satirical point about the terminally ill invalid French Sun King in The Death Of Louis XIV, this somewhat too much information death bed drama tends to instill less reflection than audience fatigue.

Which is not to say that the visual canvas up on the screen isn't sumptuously crafted with the splendor of its delicately delineated imagery, even while the main subject of the narrative in contrast slowly rots away from untreated, very probably diabetes precipitated gangrene. But as with many such cinematically conceived landscapes favoring a preference for reflection over action, unfortunately films are not paintings. But which by peculiar coincidence tends to repeatedly elicit that notion about watching paint dry instead of a movie.

Eminent French actor Jean-Pierre Leaud is hardly the one at fault here, doing his best to breathe life into a 72 year old man who barely has any left in him. And for whom that eternal notion of celebrity surrounding him is beginning to be progressively diminished into a meaningless concept, until he can't even bear the intolerable odor of his own flash rotting away - while the worshipful attending to him, servants and doctors, are the ones into incorrigibly oblivious denial.

And including bizarre scenes where they continue to attempt to feed a man obviously descended into a coma preceding death if not already arrived there, repeatedly wiping away the food rendered impossible to enter his shuttered mouth - as if they were just accidental morsels surrounding his lips. And with an ironic hand-wringing medical concurrence kicking in, that the monarch's life could quite likely have been saved with a limb amputation, but such an act could not be blasphemously imposed on one deemed a godly, celestial figure.

While throughout this 115 minute long running time bedside vigil, the characters displaying far greater endurance than we do within this extreme reality check-free zone ordeal, is not a good sign. Though competing doctors opportunistically vying for court favoritism based predominantly on a varied treatment menu comprising everything from quackery to wishful thinking, is fairly relatable in the here and now, rather than a conceptual relic from the distant past.

Prairie Miller

THE 13TH will open in theaters and be available to a mass audience simultaneously on Netflix. And more information about The 13TH and  The Death Of Louis XIV at the NY Film Festival, is online at FilmLinc.org.

Arts Express: Thursdays 2pm ET: Airing on WBAI Radio in NY 99.5 FM, and streaming live and archived everywhere at wbai.org.

Arts Express: War Dogs, Paul Robeson, Langston Hughes 'The Weary Blues,' Female Uprising In India

                Parched: Oppressed Indian Women Rising Up

**Guy Lawson Talks War Dogs: Rolling Stones journalist, upon whose investigative report this political satire starring Jonah Hill as the real life US military gun runner is based, sheds light in this conversation on how weaponry feeds the military industrial complex, as depicted in this scathing dramatic feature. And actually a second war in progress - the apparently legal arms dealer bidding war online. Lawson's original report adapted to the big screen, is titled: 'The Stoner Arms Dealers: How Two American Kids Became Big-Time Weapons Traders - And How The Pentagon Later Turned On Them.'

**Call Mr. Robeson: A Life With Songs. UK African-British actor and performer Tayo Aluko phones in from Vancouver to the Arts Express Theater Corner, to describe the worldwide tour on stage of his passionate and illuminating labor of love solo show dedicated to the life, legacy, political persecution and art of the late persecuted actor and activist Paul Robeson. And which is scheduled to return for theatrical performances here in the US in September.

LISTEN TO THE SHOW HERE

**Parched: Filmmaker Leena Yadav is on the line from India to talk about her latest movie, a dramatic feature focusing on the troubled but resilient lives of oppressed rural women there, as systemic victims of violence. And both based on and dedicated to those women who endure that horror and shared their stories.

**Poetry Corner: The vintage jazz poetry of Langston Hughes. The late African American poet reads 'The Weary Blues' in 1925, with jazz accompaniment from the Doug Parker Band. The Arts Express Best Of The Net Hotspot this week.

Arts Express: Airing on WBAI Radio in NY and the Pacifica National Radio Network and Affiliate Stations.

Arts Express: Australian New Wave Director Gillian Armstrong Talks Women He's Undressed

Bro On the 'Game Of Thrones 2016' US Presidential Election; Filmmaker Andrew Morgan Talks Toxic Global Garment Industry Oppression, Commercial Advertising Propaganda In Collusion, And 'Poverty Is Not An Accident'; Australian Director Gillian Armstrong On Her Designer Orry-Kelly Doc 'Women He's Undressed,' And Something To Do With Kathryn Hepburn, Busby Berkeley And Betty Davis Bras, Not Eyes,

**Andrew Morgan Talks The True Cost: 'Poverty Is Not An Accident.' The filmmaker is on the line to Arts Express from London to talk about the greed, power, poverty and fear surrounding the global fashion industry, that is exposed in his documentary. The LA based director delves into what deeply disturbed him about the clothing manufacturing multinationals, that led him to embark on an investigation traveling the globe to uncover the massive criminal evidence targeting those exploited and victimized garment workers everywhere, making clothes for the world. Morgan also considers what is to be done, along with scrutinizing how the toxic effects of commercial propaganda known as advertising, factor in. Out on DVD.

LISTEN TO THE SHOW HERE

**Bro On The Euro-Cultural Beat: Arts Express Paris Correspondent Professor Dennis Broe's outsider analysis of the US presidential race, '2016's Game Of Thrones.' Probing one of the most bizarre election periods in US history, where 'each is not the other, and the other is unthinkable.'
Broe also presents on location updates on the current mass uprising protests across France, verging on revolution.

**Women He's Undressed: Australian New Wave director Gillian Armstrong [My Brilliant Career] phones in from Toronto to delve into her multimedia documentary biopic out on DVD, about the late distinguished Hollywood costume designer, Orry-Kelly. And the many screen actresses he dressed through the years, including Kathryn Hepburn, Ava Gardner, Betty Grable, Ingrid Bergman, Marilyn Monroe, and the women of the Busby Berkeley chorus lines. And something having to do, not with Bette Davis eyes, but rather Bette Davis bras.
  
Arts Express: Airing on WBAI Radio in NY and the Pacifica National Radio Network and Affiliate Stations.

Arts Express: Tony Danza Talks Standards & Stories, Taxi, Tupac Shakur Friendship; Baton Rouge Radio: Sister Station Conversation; Triumph Of The Hill

        Clinton's Leni Riefenstahl Moment: Triumph Of The Hill

**Hillary's America: The Secret History Of The Democratic Party. Right wing filmmaker Dinesh D'Souza plummets the disturbing dark side, duplicitous depths of the Democrats and Hillary. But in his bid to promote the Republicans as a presidential election alternative, his documentary may ironically send audiences in droves left, to Jill Stein's Green Party instead. A Commentary.

**Tony Danza Talks Standards & Stories. The veteran star of the small screen classic Taxi, phone in to Arts Express to describe his latest on stage unique fusion of storytelling, music and song. Along with sharing memories of his special friendship with the late rapper legend Tupac Shakur when Tupac was behind bars. Also, how Danza's blue collar roots as the son of a garbage collector, has informed the genuinely conceived workingclass characters he's portrayed.

LISTEN TO THE SHOW HERE

**Sister Station Conversations: Our continuing series featuring affiliate stations airing Arts Express. This week, Arts Scouts on WHYR-FM, Baton Rouge Community Radio, presents a segment examining the legacy of racism and brutality traced back through the horrific history of slavery in Louisiana. The episode is The Art Of Understanding. From plantations to mass incarcerations, personified in particular at the former slave plantation that is Angola Prison, and a difficult history resurrected today in museums and historic sites there.
  

Pete's Dragon

Adapted from the 1977 Disney original - or rather re-imagined from a musical into a lost and found kid in the woods adventure, Pete's Dragon has moved away from full blown fantasy mode into a somewhat parallel universe of hallucination and reality. But with the curious effect that neither dominates nor effectively intertwines.

Oakes Fegley is the Pete in question, a child abruptly orphaned when his parents die in a car crash while the family is driving in the wilderness on vacation. A terrified Pete finds himself quite alone and threatened by animals roaming the forest, but an enormous dragon living there saves and protects the boy. Some years later, Pete is now a wild child inhabiting the woodland. That is, until a forest ranger (Bryce Dallas Howard) discovers him hiding there.

And following a pursuit of the frightened boy clearly terrified of humans, she brings him home for some maternal domestication. Which happens to include Robert Redford as the presiding patriarch of the household, who is somewhat nearly as much into a belief in the existence of supernatural beings as the boy is.

Meanwhile several subplots ensue, including the lonely dragon pining for his disappeared pal, and a gang of suspect lumberjacks with malice on their minds regarding intent to corner and capture the dragon - for what purpose is never made quite clear. At the same time, the forest is alarmingly being decimated of its trees, though the oversized creature bears some of the blame along with the loggers.

Pete's Dragon seems a bit off the beaten path, narratively as well as visually, with an alternately dark and daffy story seemingly having lost its way in lagging behind assorted loose ends that could use some tying up. Along with subplots concerning loss, grief, imaginary friends and environmental consciousness for kids that never materialize enough for this predominantly somber tall tale, to latch on to a clearing out of these woods. Not to mention a little Paul Bunyan pick-me-up that would have been in order, to lighten up this solemn when not magical yarn.

Prairie Miller

Arts Express: Airing on WBAI Radio in NY and the Pacifica National Radio Network and Affiliate Stations.

Arts Express: Matthew Modine, Bro On The Euro-Cultural Beat, And French Bosses Telling Laid Off Suicidal Workers To 'Leave By The Door Or The Window.'

      MODINE IN THE ANTI-WAR CLASSIC, FULL METAL JACKET

**Matthew Modine Talks Stranger Things: While referencing Kubrick, Altman, Ferrara, Oliver Stone, and what those iconic filmmakers taught him about creative inspiration while starring in their movies; filming about Occupy Movement; Hitchcock, the pyramids, his father's drive-in theater, Hitler's bunker in Berlin; terror on screen and in the real world, and sci-fi government oppression on the small screen in Stranger Things.

LISTEN TO THE SHOW HERE

**Bro On The Euro-Cultural Beat: Arts Express Paris Correspondent Professor Dennis Broe presenting unfiltered global news with a cultural perspective. And connecting Nice, Syria, financial fraud and Icelandic bankers; mass protests in the streets across France, multinational tax shelters infamously known as Treasure Islands; French workers bullied in the workplace by disembodied robotic voices known as The Talkman, and labor layoffs and suicides with bosses declaring that workers leave 'one way or another - either by the door or by the window.'

**Outlaws And Angels: A Conversation With Francis Fisher. The actress is on the line from LA discussing revisionist, anti-mythologized westerns; starring alongside daughter Francesca Eastwood who plays an enigmatic frontier rebel in the movie; what violent westerns are saying about the society we find ourselves in today; and what's up with massive disappeared California ballots and the strange presidential election currently in progress. 

Arts Express: Airing on WBAI Radio in NY and the Pacifica National Radio Network and Affiliate Stations.

Free State Of Jones: Buried US History Of Righteous Rural Guerrilla Warfare Reignites On Screen

       
        Women In Black: Female Action Hero Women Warriors

As foreign and alien a concept as mass uprising and guerilla warfare have been made to appear in official US history - and more recently by its ideological accomplice, the corporate media - a fiery history of such events has existed, however buried but defiantly bubbling beneath the surface. And films, whether documentary or docudrama, have increasingly emerged to bring to life the truth, courage, sacrifices and indeed inspiration of that suppressed past.

And which could not be more vividly and defiantly portrayed at the moment, in the historical drama, Free State Of Jones - a breathlessly captivating chronicle of no less than a guerrilla warfare peasant uprising revolutionary movement in this country back during the Civil War. And yet a film that very possibly could have only been made at the historical moment in time. As seemingly ignited by the Occupy Movement, Black Lives Matter, and the current mass momentum of youth in economic crisis today fueling the newly emerging rebel anti-establishment political impulses shaking up the presidential election period right now - and immune to the enduring post-McCarthyite state terrorism propaganda that previous generations have been steeped in.

The film is directed by Gary Ross (The Hunger Games), son of the late Red Scare blacklisted Hollywood screenwriter Arthur Ross - best known for the Oscar-nominated Brubaker and as co-writer of The Creature From The Black Lagoon. Free State Of Jones resurrects the deliberately deleted history of a rural Mississippi insurrectionary uprising in the South during the Civil War, and led by farmer and Confederate Army deserter, Newt Knight - in a mesmerizing gritty, humble and courageously stoic performance by Matthew McConaughey. And Knight became increasingly horrified and disgusted not only by the senseless and massive slaughter of the war - with over 600,000 deaths, second only to the Vietnam loss of US lives - and in terms of the US population today what would have represented seven million deaths on the battlefield. Along with thirty percent of the Southern white male population wiped out in that war, most of them poor farmers - while plantation slaveholders were declared exempt from the draft.

At the same time as depicted in the film, was the naked brutality of the Confederate Army, seizing the crops, livestock and possessions of terrorized farmers for war supplies - and their male offspring to serve as child soldiers  - consigning the population to virtual starvation. Which leads Knight to amass a fierce and fiery, salt of the earth rural revolutionary guerrilla army staked out in the swamps, with escaped slaves and women warriors as well battling the army and plantation owners alike.

And these swamp guerrillas inspired, not just as anti-war or abolitionist, but in class struggle shaped by a collective consciousness conveyed through Knight's words and ideas - encapsulated as rebellion against a 'rich man's war,' seizing the socialist notion  - along with the confiscated crops of their labor in the fields - that "what you put in the ground nobody can take from you. It's as simple as that.' - and, "we say no man stay poor so another be rich." While the Union Army apparently opportunistically welcomed but later betrayed this Southern insurrection and mobilization of that Free State Of Jones County territory which Newt established.

And if there are insights to be gleaned from this short lived but heroic chapter in US history today, it's not just intimations of Democratic party vote rigging today that ensued during the repressive death squad Klan emergence following the war. But the US government as well, turning against them after exploiting them against the Confederacy during the war - evidently to extinguish a new and dangerous radical notion of social and economic equality sabotaging an emerging capitalism - ideas that just might spread North. As reported by Knight to his disheartened, now men without a country betrayed followers, "It seems we ain't got no country - only inside. So we'll be our own country."

Not that these ideas and impulses were anything new on the world stage. Witness the valiant uprising of that Paris Commune during that same period. And several decades earlier, two young men in their twenties collaborating on a pamphlet that would endure and inflame the masses everywhere, declaring - 'Workers of the World, Unite. You have nothing to lose but your chains!' And those words of Marx and Engels back then, that still today reignite against capitalism - whether in the streets of Paris or on the screen with Free State Of Jones right now.

Arts Express: Thursdays 2pm ET: Airing on WBAI Radio in NY 99.5 FM, and streaming live and archived everywhere at wbai.org.

Prairie Miller