jaz

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/45227831

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/45227830

Chinese police harass filmmakers in the U.S. and their families in China to shut down film festival in New York City, rights group says

[...]

Chinese authorities harassed several dozen Chinese film directors and producers, as well as their families in China, causing them to pull films from the inaugural IndieChina Film Festival in New York City, Human Rights Watch said today. On November 6, 2025, the festival’s organizer, Zhu Riku, announced that the film festival, scheduled for November 8-15, had been “suspended.”

“The Chinese government reached around the globe to shut down a film festival in New York City,” said Yalkun Uluyol, China researcher at Human Rights Watch. “This latest act of transnational repression demonstrates the Chinese government’s aim to control what the world sees and learns about China.”

Chiang Seeta, a Chinese artist and activist, reported that nearly all participating directors in China faced intimidation. Even directors abroad, including those who are not Chinese nationals, reported that their relatives and friends in China were receiving threatening calls from police, said Chiang.

[...]

Documentary filmmaker Ken Burns has long been a chronicler of the American experience. He talks with John Dickerson about his latest film for PBS, "The American Revolution"; the importance of studying history; and why the end of the Revolutionary War did not mean the end of our nation's revolution.

• The American Revolution | A Film by Ken Burns, Sarah Botstein & David Schmidt | Official Trailer

...David Frum speaks with filmmaker Ken Burns about his new documentary series on the American Revolution. Together, they explore the Revolution’s competing legacies—liberty and exclusion, heroism and hypocrisy—and how its unresolved contradictions still shape the nation’s identity. Burns reflects on the moral complexity of figures like George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, the forgotten role of Loyalists and Indigenous nations, and the Revolution’s echoes in contemporary America.

• The Triumphs and Tragedies of the American Revolution, with Ken Burns | The David Frum Show

https://archive.is/fCeNk

I am writing this on a plane between New York City and Detroit, which is fitting, because I have lived in both places. Each of them will elect a new mayor this week, and traditionally if Americans assumed which one would be facing major ugly issues at election time, from crushing economics to homelessness to nasty accusations between the candidates, they might assume Detroit.

Not anymore.

...

During that same time, Detroit has had just one mayor, Mike Duggan, who led the city out of bankruptcy, heavily eliminated the blight issues, brought down crime, brought up investment, and recently boasted an 84% approval rating.

...

In New York, Mamdani has divided the voters — and in many ways, the nation — as to his intentions, his qualifications and his honesty.

His proponents see him as a fresh face unbeholden to the political machine, an advocate for the poor and the marginalized, a Muslim man who knows what it means to battle hate, and a young guy who gets that the cost of renting an apartment in New York is insane, like pretty much everything else there.

His critics see him as a slick product of the social media age, an anti-rich, antisemitic activist with unworkable ideas borne from the Democratic Socialist party to which he proudly claims membership. They paint him as a hypocritical poser, claiming to be marginalized when his father is an Ivy League professor and his mother an Oscar-nominated film director.

...

People Under the Stairs was an American hip hop duo from Los Angeles, California, formed in 1997 and disbanded in 2019.

https://peopleunderthestairs.bandcamp.com/album/acid-raindrops