Brandon Harris
Brandon Harris is a Visiting Assistant Professor of Film at SUNY Purchase, a Contributing Editor at Filmmaker Magazine and an Associate Programmer of the Aspen ShortsFest. He has written about film, politics and their inevitable intersections for The New Yorker, The New Republic, VICE, The Daily Beast, and n+1. His memoir, Making Rent in Bed-Stuy, is forthcoming from Amistad.
The Emancipation Wetdream
On Django Unchained
By Brandon Harris
Quentin Tarantino is an iconoclast, a gifted pastiche artist, and someone who firmly believes in his vision, God bless him. He effectively and articulately gets out in front of any attempt to critique it, and he has once again in the wake of his newest film, the incendiary 19th century slave revenge epic Django Unchained.
Change You Can Believe In
Shaka King’s Newlyweeds and Neil Drumming’s Big Words
By Brandon Harris
This is a rough time for dreamers, the late Obama era. Brooklyn is full of them, scuffling along, pretending this is still a city kind to their dying tribe.
THE BLACK LIBERATION KOOL-AID ACID TEST
On Chi-Raq
By Brandon Harris
The final image of Spike Lee’s Chi-Raq—an adaptation of Aristophanes’s Lysistrata named the best film of 2015 by venerated critics like Amy Nicholson (formerly of the LA Weekly) and The New Yorker’s Richard Brody—is a shot of the city of Chicago’s flag bearing the words “WAKE UP.” It’s unclear, though, what exactly we’re supposed to wake up from.
