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                                   For a long time now I have had a fascination with South Africa. I cannot say if it is through knowing South Africans, through taking two college courses that focused on South Africa, or just a natural interest aroused by the idiosyncratic nature of the country. The parallels between South Africa and America are well documented – as Robert Kennedy said in 1968, both can be described as a land settled by the Dutch in the mid-seventeenth century, then taken over by the British, and at last independent; a land in which the native inhabitants were at first subdued, but relations with whom remain a problem to this day; a land which defined itself on a hostile frontier; a land which has tamed rich natural resources through the energetic application of modern technology; a land which once imported slaves, and now must struggle to wipe out the last traces of that former bondage. While I was in South Africa over the 2016-2017 Christmas and New Yea

          Two weeks ago my father rented a house in Duck, North Carolina, on the beach, and scattered family members made the trek south to spend a week together swimming, reading, cooking, watching movies, and, of course, assembling a thousand piece puzzle. My mother had bought a puzzle that contained numerous paintings by Vincent Van Gogh, which was great as it gave us all a rich experience studying his work as we tried to assemble the pieces. As we worked on this puzzle, I found myself sputtering all sorts of facts and theories about Van Gogh, and I soon realised that I seemed to know quite a bit about the man, despite having never studied him nor even reading a single book about him. Everything I know can be credited to two films – Loving Vincent (2017) and Lust for Life (1956).             I saw Loving Vincent at the Princeton Garden Theatre last year, and was absolutely mesmerized by it.   I knew little of Van Gogh’s life – I knew that he had been unsuccessful in his own li

           I have now recently seen Spike Lee’s new film, BlacKkKlansman, twice, and I am left with an overflow of thoughts and emotions. Not ignoring some poignant points made by Boots Riley ( Sorry to Bother You) , who convincingly argues that the real Ron Stallworth was not the hero the movie portrays, I think it is an amazing movie. It is the first film that really grapples with America in the age of Trump, despite being set in the Nixon administration. It is not a film that is designed to start a conversation exactly – maybe a riot – but it forces us to to grapple with some dark conclusions. The film begins with shots from Gone With the Wind and Birth of a Nation , two films that transformed the possibilities for what cinema could achieve, and two films that are remembered for their reactionary views of the American Civil War . Until this week, I had never seen DW Griffith’s Birth of a Nation; I knew it for its place within the context of film history and American h