Neyat Yohannes

...will my carefully selected trinkets—the private archive of dusty junk I hold deeply—reveal my legacy? This is precisely what ends up being the case for many women whose histories are often comprised of archival materials they’ve curated for themselves, honoring themselves and their life’s work, society having long-prioritized eulogizing patriarchal accomplishments. These loose archives—the soft evidence of self-worth and care—are beautiful and instructive, but do not carry with them the forcefulness of the large, dimensional, officially recognized monuments that take up civic space.

Mia Thermopolis’s journey to self-actualization—even if by way of an antiquated beautification process—is still a relevant and relatable one.

For her site-specific exhibition Future Shock, Sam Vernon breathes total disruption into MiM Gallery.

Interview with Brianna Rose Brooks for Issue 23 of Contemporary Art Review Los Angeles (Carla).

Domestic work offers both an agonizing ennui and the satisfaction of a necessary task being completed. In the 1981 documentary Clotheslines, filmmaker Roberta Cantow mines these two moods, as well as the subtler emotions that fill the distance between them. Over the course of this thirty-two-minute, nearly ekphrastic meditation on the art of laundry, we listen to twenty-one women reconcile their feelings about this mundane chore.

Close-Up is a feature that spotlights films now playing on MUBI. Mati Diop's In My Room is now exclusively showing in the MUBI library.

IN MY ROOM picks up where [Chantal] Akerman left off and introduces a quarantine special that treats isolation as a universal inevitability...

When Kathleen Collins died in 1988, she left behind a trail of unfinished magic. A number of her projects were left incomplete, but LOSING GROUND is what her finished magic looks like.

The Watermelon Woman (1996) employs bold stylistic choices to ultimately challenge that traditional collective consciousness as we know it. By leaning into the sensibilities of New Queer Cinema and taking on a genre-bending pseudo-documentary approach, the film introduces a Black lesbian gaze and dredges up Hollywood’s racist origins..

Cowboy culture has long been rooted in settler colonialism and marked by images of white hypermasculinity. Filmmaker Jingjing Tian is taking a whack at dismantling that image.

On the sunlit shores of Lake Okeechobee, four teenagers encounter all of the florid rituals that come with their senior year at Pahokee High School. Directors Ivete Lucas and Patrick Bresnan have set short films in this place before (The Send Off, Rabbit Hunt), but their love affair with the tiny Florida town culminates in their debut feature, the eponymously titled Pahokee.

This year’s Sundance Film Festival brought a flurry of films about loss—of self, of family members, and of tired mindsets—to snowy Park City. But it was an event marked by gains, too. New additions to the festival included eight indigenous and native filmmakers, a hearty roster of directors of color, and a brand new Press Inclusion Initiative, making Robert Redford’s decision to step back as the face of Sundance feel appropriate and timely.

For nearly 30 years, the Leimert Park bookstore has showcased books by Black authors — the rare, the beloved, and the new.

In this audio piece, co-owner James Fugate reflects on his evolution as a bookseller and how Eso Won came to be the city’s unofficial literary headquarters for Black writing.

I’ve grown weary of reading non-POC journalists cover everyday POC experiences like they’ve been given a passport to an alien planet. I’m talking about those anthropological stories that make like Christopher Columbus and “discover” food, music, films, books, etc. that were otherwise already being enjoyed by a majority of the population. These articles are often reductive and offensive to a readership (people of color, women, youth) that tends to be neglected by the mainstream media.

We decide to meet at a bustling juice shop. The kind that mentions nature in its mission and manages to incorporate hemp milk and turmeric into all of its menu items. “I’m wearing a white pinstriped shirt, a red Supreme headband, and sporting an afro puff today,” texts 18 year-old character animator, Rachel Headlam. Sure enough, moments later, I spot a pair of puffs in the crowd and flag her down.

The pizza at Michael’s Pizzeria is questionable. The crust is inconsistent—sometimes you get a Chicago style, other times it’s of the crunchy cracker variety. They have a dozen toppings to choose from, but really, plain cheese is the safe bet. After all, you wouldn’t want to pay more than $10.00 for cardboard. Oh and the calzones advertised with a bubbly decal at the window? They’re always out of it.