Peter Wong

Film in 2025 was for this writer a bright spot in a year where American fascists used the umbrella of the Republican Party to try undoing the great political and cultural advancements of the 20th century.  The enormity of their<br> Read More »

Marco Bolognes’ animated film “Blackflag” is not telling a story (or even three stories) despite the claims of its 17th century European military gear-clad hostess who wears kabuki makeup.  Its real focus is depicting life in this alleged futuristic utopia.<br> Read More »

The Church of Biblical Freedom might sound as if it has nothing in common with the Satanic Temple.  Yet this Soviet Georgian church might be called a spiritual brother to the Satanic Temple’s mission of opposing organized religious types who<br> Read More »

Who knew Israel’s genocidaires could be effectively trolled by the simple sentences “It’s Ahmad.  I’m alive?”  Those are the words Ahmad Ghunaim, the subject of Yusu Omar and Aurelia Driver’s United Nations Association Film Festival documentary short “Ahmad Alive,” regularly<br> Read More »

Jafar Panahi, director of “It Was Just An Accident,” does not direct films in the most anodyne sense of the phrase.  The best of his works do more than make leaps for the low-hanging fruit of entertaining the viewer fortunate<br> Read More »

“Bamako Chic:Threads Of Power, Color, And Culture,” the new short from the longtime Les Blank collaborator Maureen Gosling and cultural anthropologist Maxine Downs, Ph.D., is the good kind of introduction to a facet of a culture different from that of<br> Read More »

Local filmmaker Rick Goldsmith’s powerful documentary “Stripped For Parts: American Journalism On The Brink” may have been around since 2023.  But that fact doesn’t make the film’s information dated or irrelevant.  In fact, given the ongoing American right-wing oligarchy’s program<br> Read More »