#A Love Song for Latasha

[angelstills]

A Love Song for Latasha (2020)

#A Love Song for Latasha #2020s #2020 #Film #Sophia Nahli Allison

[dreamfaerye]

Watched A Love Song for Latasha and cried.

It's less than 20 mins long but had details that I didn't know. Like that her mother had also been murdered and she was helping her grandmother raise her younger siblings. That she protected other kids from bullies. I knew she wanted to be a lawyer but she also wanted to own a business with her best friend and do community outreach.

That Soon Ja Du, her murderer, had pulled her gun out and threatened people, other children, before.

Apparently, Du is still alive. May her death be excruciating and her soul never rest.

#Latasha Harlins #A Love Song for Latasha #documentary #la riots #netflix #1990s #racism #murder #soon ja du

[omgthatdress]

[jewishgoth]

Watching some of the documentaries on my watch list and I'd really like to recommend 'A Love Song For Latasha'. It's about Latasha Harlins so it's obviously an emotional watch, but it's done so wonderfully and it truly is a beautiful memorial for her. Less than 20 minutes long but so, so impactful 💜

#ive got a documentary on paris is burning i wanna watch and then another i think is called the stroll?. #but i have a historical lecture tonight to tune into so those may need to wait

[rebeleden]

Watch "A Love Song For Latasha | Official Trailer | Netflix" on YouTube

#Youtube

[ddubayu]

Good Saturday Morning fam! Manchester park. Mural dedicated to Latasha Harlin by artist @vcassinova "We Queens" in collaboration with @netflix " A beautiful vibrant work. In conjunction with a Netflix film "A Love Song for Latasha" more info on vc's ig. Hit it up. #GraffitiADay #Graffitihunter #Graffiti #Spraycans #lagraffiti #graffitiart #graffitiporn #mural #streetart #streetstyle #art #style (at Los Angeles, California) https://www.instagram.com/p/Cn95_gJvzCL/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

#graffitiaday #graffitihunter #graffiti #spraycans #lagraffiti #graffitiart #graffitiporn #mural #streetart #streetstyle #art #style

[isxbellasblog]

Art Work I Love

Art is a way to express one's soul, but it is also used to speak out about the world's struggles. One of my favorite pieces of music is "Keep Ya Head Up" by a famous rapper known as Tupac. Tupac was raised by a single mother who he saw struggle very much, they were constantly moving around until they finally settles in Baltimore. Tupac went to school for poetry which made his lyrics blend together smoothly. "Keep Ya Head Up" was released in 1993, and he dedicated it to a 15-year-old girl named Latasha Harlins who was shot and killed during a riot. In his song, he goes over women's struggles such as rape, murder, and abuse. This caught my attention because it is a rare thing to feel so understood about the struggles many women have gone through in the category of rap. In the song, he explains how women have already gone through so much that men should now learn how to love and protect, and even if they do not learn how to, we should always look to the future and keep our heads high. He also explains that if nobody else will learn how to care about us, he will always care and be on our side. Tupac goes into depth about the struggles his mother went through with addiction and how she gave her all to try to raise him the best she could, and due to this he also has a song dedicated to her named "Dear Mama". I think that this is a piece of art that everybody should closely listen to in order to understand the depth of the struggles that single mothers and young women go through, but also to understand that no matter what, we have to stand up, look forward to peaceful better days, and keep our heads up.

[fuckyeahwomenfilmdirectors]

In Sophia Nahli Allison’s new short documentary about the girl’s life, A Love Song for Latasha, the footage from the liquor store isn’t featured. Instead of focusing on the circumstances of the teenager’s death through the shorthand often deployed in recounting her story—the orange juice, the video tape—the experimental short, which debuts on Netflix Monday, celebrates her life as told by the women who loved her. If you’ve seen anything of Latasha’s life, it’s likely the final seconds of her existence. Allison instead creates a brief, stirring portrait of the fifteen years that preceded them.

#A Love Song for Latasha #2019 #Sophia Nahli Allison #USA #Documentary #short

[moviemosaics]

A Love Song for Latasha

directed by Sophia Nahli Allison, 2019

#A Love Song for Latasha #Sophia Nahli Allison #movie mosaics #Latasha Harlins #Shinese Harlins #Tybie O'Bard

[dweemeister]

Best Documentary Short Film Nominees for the 93rd Academy Awards (2021, listed in order of appearance in the shorts package)

NOTE: For viewers in the United States (continental U.S., Alaska, and Hawai’i) who would like to watch the Oscar-nominated short film packages, click here. For virtual cinemas, you can purchase the packages individually or all three at once. You can find info about reopened theaters that are playing the packages in that link. Because moviegoing carries risks at this time, please remember to follow health and safety guidelines as outlined by your local, regional, and national health guidelines.

A Love Song for Latasha (2019)

On March 16, 1991, Latasha Harlins, a 15-year-old African-American girl, was murdered by Soon Ja Du at Du’s convenience store in Los Angeles. The murder, which occurred almost two weeks after Rodney King’s beating at the hands of the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD), contributed to the start of the 1992 LA riots one year later. Directed by Sophia Nahli Allison, A Love Song for Latasha is an avant grade film that intercuts statements by Latasha’s friends and family about the young girl they cared deeply for. Alongside reenacted scenes of childhood, of black girls frolicking on the Californian coastline and the streets of Los Angeles, the film serves as an intimate eulogy for Latasha – one delivered as memories about her become less immediate.

Whatever justified rage the Los Angeles rioters might have felt in 1992 is not the dominant force in Allison’s film. A Love Song for Latasha is foremost a cinematic lament rather than a political polemic. With the reenacted scenes edited and appearing as if it resembling a home movie, this piece appears like a visualization of the memories that the interviewees are recalling. When Latasha was murdered, she ceased to be just a daughter or a friend. A Love Song for Latasha, thirty years on, seeks to reclaim those distinctions for those who knew her best – something, given the significance of Latasha’s murder in history, that may never happen.

My rating: 6.5/10

Do Not Split (2020, Norway)

From Norwegian documentarian-journalist Anders Hammer comes Do Not Split, a street-level glimpse into the protests against the 2019 Extradition Law Amendment Bill (ELAB) that inspired the passage of the 2020 Hong Kong national security law. The events depicted in Hammer’s film include the Hong Kong police’s sieges of the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) and Hong Kong Polytechnic University, in addition to small-scale clashes between protesters and police, as well as mainland Chinese instigating confrontations. Hammer’s footage is harrowing material, a collection of violent imagery with few moments of individual revelation or introspection outside of the presence of Michigan-born activist Joey Siu. Do Not Split decides not to attempt a dialectic of why the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the Hong Kong Legislative Council (LegCo) are pursuing these changes and are brutalizing the protesters, depriving this film of the context that less knowledgeable viewers might need. For those who have been keeping at least superficially aware of events in Hong Kong, there is never any question on which side Hammer is on – despite Hammer’s journalistic background, this is not a piece of objective journalism.

Yet this is not agitprop due to the politics left mostly unexplained, and none of Do Not Split’s flaws take away from the rawness of the protesters’ desperation and the cynicism of the police and government officials enacting the crackdown. Despite the repetitive nature of the footage by the time it reaches the final stages of its thirty-five-minute runtime, Do Not Split contains excellent, crisp hand-held footage that makes immediate sense of the space and time of the depicted violence.

My rating: 8/10

Hunger Ward (2020)

For Pluto TV (some cord-cutting television service I was not familiar with until I started writing this) and MTV Films and directed by Skye Fitzgerald (2018 Oscar-nominated short film Lifeboat), Hunger Ward follows doctor Aida Al-sadeeq and nurse Mekkia Mahdi as they treat malnourished children in the midst of ongoing the Yemeni famine. The famine, directly related to the civil war that began in late 2014, has seen almost a hundred thousand children die in what UNICEF describes as, “the largest humanitarian crisis in the world.” Fitzgerald film works best when focusing on Al-sadeeq and Mahdi, as they describe the heartbreak conditions of the hunger ward and their experiences since the famine began. However, much of Hunger Ward’s footage is too in-your-face with footage of the mothers’ grieving and the last moments of several children. It appears almost as if gawking at the desperation and death that occurs every day in this hospital.

This is not to say that there is no revelation in the image of a child with their eyes glazed in lifelessness or the unearthly wails of a mother overtaken by grief. Fitzgerald edits and shoots their film in a way that makes this process – a child in their last moments of care, a declaration of death, a shot of the child’s corpse, a cut to the mother inside or arriving to the deathbed, and the echoing despair – occur tediously in their movie. Hunger Ward never breaks from this tedious formula. The film is redeemed only by withholding its slings and arrows until some text prior to the end credits, correctly assigning responsibility with Western nations that have enabled and abetted the violence in Yemen.

My rating: 6/10

Colette (2020)

Colette Marin-Catherine is in her twilight years and, upon first appearances, one might not predict the incredible life story that she has to tell. She was a French Resistance member, and French Resistance narratives tend to be sidelined in favor of those depicting Allied soldiers liberating France instead. But Anthony Giacchino’s (the brother of composer Michael Giacchino) film, distributed by British newspaper The Guardian and made for an extra feature of the virtual reality (VR) video game Medal of Honor: Above and Beyond, decides to linger on the memories of Colette’s murdered brother, who died at Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp in Germany, instead. At the urging and with the assistance of the young historian Lucie Fouble, who is interested in telling Colette’s story (although technically this is not Colette’s story), Colette travels to Germany to visit the site of Mittelbau-Dora so that Colette can… spill out her feelings?         

It is self-evident that Colette does not see the academic or personal value of such a trip, but the irascible subject of this short film will nevertheless humor Fouble – her intentions genuine, her approach questionable. Colette, who cannot forget the loss of brother but has not been dwelling on his death, is emotionally vulnerable throughout the trip to Germany, and the audience learns little about Colette, German atrocities, or her brother. Even in these moments, she remains a compelling figure on-screen, but this movie is a disservice to its eponymous subject – one who deserves more credit as a member of the French Resistance, as someone not defined by the worst thing that had ever happened to her.

My rating: 6/10

A Concerto Is a Conversation (2020)

Distributed by The New York Times and executive produced by Ava DuVernay, Ben Proudfoot and Kris Bower direct a deeply personal documentary short film to bookend this slate of five. A Concerto Is a Conversation contains a conversation between Kris Bowers (composer on 2018’s Green Book and 2021’s The United States vs. Billie Holiday) and his grandfather, Horace Bowers Sr., before the premiere of Bower’s concerto at the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles. What follows is a disjointed film with sketches of Jim Crow-era America from Horace’s past to the anxiety-laden self-questioning of Kris’ present. Kris, as a black man, is questioning his place in the classical music world – which has, justifiably in some ways, been seen as staid and white. If A Concerto Is Not a Conversation can bridge the differences between Horace and Kris’ stories, it barely does so thank to the scattershot editing.

Yet Kris and Horace’s conversation is wholesome, admiring, loving. This is Kris’ way to show his appreciation for his grandfather and the struggles that he endured for most of his life. The out-of-focus background makes A Concerto Is Not a Conversation seem almost like a dream, a meeting that almost should not be happening. And in honoring Kris’ profession and the piece that is set to debut, the film is divided into noticeable thirds – just like a concerto’s three movements. A Concerto Is Not a Conversation might not make for the most cohesive viewing, but it is a celebration of a profound bond, tied together by forces that defy even the most eloquent words: music and love.

My rating: 6.5/10

^ All ratings based on my personal imdb rating. Half-points are always rounded down. My interpretation of that ratings system can be found in the “Ratings system” page on my blog (as of July 1, 2020, tumblr is not permitting certain posts with links to appear on tag pages, so I cannot provide the URL).

For more of my reviews tagged “My Movie Odyssey”, check out the tag of the same name on my blog.

From previous years: 88th Academy Awards (2016), 89th (2017), 90th (2018), 91st (2019) and 92nd (2020).

#A Love Song for Latasha #Do Not Split #Hunger Ward #Colette #A Concerto Is a Conversation #Sophia Nahli Allison #Anders Hammer #Skye Fitzgerald #Michael Shueuerman #Anthony Giacchino #Ben Proudfoot #Kris Bowers #Latasha Harlins #Hong Kong #Yemen #Ava DuVernay #93rd Academy Awards #Oscars #31 Days of Oscar #My Movie Odyssey

[angelstills]

A Love Song for Latasha (2020)

#A Love Song for Latasha #2020s #2020 #Film #Sophia Nahli Allsion

[bossymarmalade]

- A Love Song for Latasha

The 1991 murder of Latasha Harlins was one of the inciting incidents for the following year’s mass uprising in Los Angeles. But the new short documentary A Love Song for Latasha does not wish to dwell on the circumstances of her death. Director Sophia Nahli Allison believes that in the decades since, Harlins as a human being has been obscured. She wants to recapture who this Black teen was in life, so that she can be more than a symbol of racial injustice.

(x)

#chromatic voice #latasha harlins #a love song for latasha #sophia nahli

[cinemaven99]

A Love Song For Latasha | Official Trailer | Netflix

#trailers #A Love Song for Latasha #Netlix #documentary #2020 film #2020

[rebeleden]

Watch "A LOVE SONG FOR LATASHA Trailer (2020) Netflix" on YouTube

100

#Youtube

[mymoviemania-oscar-2021]

Nominations for the 93rd Academy Awards:

- Best documentary short subject -

"A Love Song for Latasha" (2019) directed by Sophia Nahli Allison and Janice Duncan (creative producer)

Sophia Nahli Allison

#a love song for latasha #documentary #short #sophia nahli allison #janice duncan #Oscar 2021 #93rd academy awards

[greensparty]

Green’s Party Guide to 2021 Oscar Nominated Short Films

Even with awards season being delayed this year, I am very excited to continue my annual tradition of showcasing the Academy Award nominees for Best Animated Short Film, Best Live Action Short Film and Best Documentary Short Film (read my 2017, 2018, 2019 and 2020 guides). This year’s nominated short film are available from ShortsTV both in theaters and online. I’ve watched all of them and had time to think about them all. Here are my thoughts and predictions:

Shorts TV poster

Best Animated Short Film:

This category wouldn’t feel like this category without Pixar, who are nominated this year with Burrow, a 2-D story of a young rabbit. It was directed by Madeline Sharafian (a storyboard artist on Pixar’s Coco). It’s short and has a message about community relations. Genius Loci, from France, examines a loner who sees the chaos in her mind and throughout the city around her. Netflix’s If Anything Happens I Love You is co-directed by Michael Govier (Conan) and Will McCormack (who co-wrote the original story for Toy Story 4). It is about a grieving husband and wife who are visited by the shadows of themselves and their deceased daughter. Pixar album Erick Oh directs Opera, which looks at human society through a giant pyramid (nice metaphor). Yes-People, from Iceland, shows a group of people and their daily routine and struggles. Shorts TV have also included some extra honorable mentions in this category’s program: Kapaemahu, The Snail and the Whale, and To: Gerard.

Will Win: If Anything Happens, I Love You is the frontrunner and has name recognition with executive producer Laura Dern.

Should Win: If Anything Happens, I Love You is hands down the best animated film (short or feature) 2020 release IMHO! This is a perfect example of how pushing the envelope in the medium of animation and using the medium to tell more dramatic stories can use the animation to draw the emotions and tug the heartstrings.

Best Live Action Short Film:

First up is Feeling Through about a late night encounter in NYC between a teen and a man who is both blind and deaf. Next is The Letter Room about a prison guard (played by Oscar Isaac) who gets transferred to a new job scanning all incoming letters to prisoners and he soon finds himself more involved than he should in their lives. The Present is about a Palestinian man who takes his young daughter with him to the West Bank to buy an anniversary gift and all of the obstacles he faces in doing so. From Netflix, Two Distant Strangers, a Black man has an altercation with a white NYPD officer that results in him reliving the incident in a time loop where he has to experience it over and over. From Israel is White Eye, a single-take story of a man who discovers his bike that was stolen a month earlier now belongs to another man, which leads to several moral questions when the cops arrive.

Will Win: Two Distant Strangers. This year, there are a lot of shorts dealing with social issues and human injustices. But Two Distant Strangers, which premiered a few months after the killing of George Floyd, is a clever take on Groundhog Day, but has a lot to say about police brutality. For some reason, there’s been a lot of riffs on Groundhog Day this past year (i.e. Palm Springs and The Map of Tiny Perfect Things), but this was easily the best. The fact that it is co-directed by Daily Show / Samantha Bee writer Travon Free and produced by Sean Combs, Kevin Durant and Adam McKay makes it one of the most high profile nominees too.

Should Win: This is a hard one as there were many strong live action short films this year, but The Present really stayed with me. White Eye had a lot to say in a short amount of time too, and it was all done in one take, which was highly impressive. Both of these deserve a tie breaker.

Best Documentary Short Film:

First up is The New York Times’ A Concerto Is a Conversation about musician Kris Bowers (who co-directed this) and his conversation with his 91-year-old grandfather about his journey from 1940s Florida to being a Los Angeles-based business-owner. Netflix’s A Love Song for Latasha is about Latasha Harlins, a 15-year-old girl who was killed at a South Central Los Angeles store in 1991. Its told via VHS footage, re-enactments and narrated by her best friend. From The Guardian, Colette profiles Colette Marin-Catherine, a former French Resistance member who refused to step foot in Germany for over 74 years. Things change when she meets Lucie, a young history major who convinces her to visit the concentration camp where her brother was killed. In Do Not Split, they documents the 2019 anti-Beijing demonstrations in Hong Kong. This protest footage is incredible and at times I was wondering how they kept the camera going among the conflicts with police. Whether this wins the award or not, it is already causing a stir in China, where they have banned the Oscars from being broadcast in the country because of this doc. From MTV Documentary Films is Hunger Ward about two of the most active feeding centers in Yemen as two doctors try to save hunger-stricken children. To say this was difficult to watch would be a colossal understatement. Well done, but hard to watch.

Will Win: A Love Song for Latasha. A case could be made for any of these docs all powerful in their own way, and a strong argument could be made for A Concerto is a Conversation being the upset winner since its a somewhat uplifting in contrast with the other nominees. But Latasha keeps the memory alive of a teenage girl whose life was cut way too short and sadly that resonates today.

Should Win:  This is really hard as they were all such different subjects. But I think Latasha and Colette were the strongest of the nominees. Both are told by loved ones remembering someone whose life was cut short.

This year’s Oscar Nominated Short Films can be seen online from ShortsTV and in movie theaters, including AMC Boston Common 19 (Animated and Live Action) and virtual cinema screenings at ICA and Coolidge Corner Theatre in Boston. For tickets and info: https://tickets.oscar-shorts.com/tickets/

#oscar nominated shorts #short films #movie reviews #burrow #genius Loci #if anything happens i love you #opera #yes-people #feeling through #the letter room #the present #two distant strangers #white eye #a concerto is a conversation #a love song for latasha #colette #do not split #hunger ward #film geek #documentary