Our Picks + Waves

This week we are joined by Matt Howsam, a production coordinator in the VFX industry and a film critic. We mention the hilarious and highly original One Cut of the Dead (2017) by Shin'ichirô Ueda, a Japanese Zombie comedy in the style of some of the best mockumentaries out there and a homage to low budget filmmaking. Depending on where you are you can watch it on Shudder or buy the DVD. Abla also highlights the Netflix series Unwell (2020– ), which looks at the dark side of the wellness industry and some of the products and concepts currently being flogged on the market through – yet again – more MLM initiatives. For our festival picks, this week we recommend Visionmaker's Indigenous Filmmakers Festival, which runs from 31 August to 5 October, the Encounters Short Film Festival, one of the world's best short ff, which runs from 18 September to 11 October and is offering a £10 pass! A few films to highlight are Mahdi Fleifel's 3 Logical Exits, Clermont-Ferrand Grand Prize winner Anthony Nti's Da Yie and Morad Mostapha's Henet Ward. Matt recommends Women Make Films (2019), a 14-hour doc series and the Japanese cinema season, both on BFI Player. Matt chose to discuss Trey Edward Shults's Waves (2019), a dizzying and theatrical film about a family dealing with the aftermath of a tragedy. We discuss the highly cinematic and aesthetic qualities of the film, the impact that has on the emotional punch of the story and the portrayal of the characters, and the somewhat problematic or baffling portrayal of family dynamics that are very personal to the (white) director through the prism of a black family. We briefly mention the Chinese drama So Long, My Son (2019) in our conclusive remarks. If you like our work, you can support us at mydy.link/support. Follow us @mydylarama on Twitter & Facebook Follow us and comment! 🎙️ mydy.link/podcast 🎧 mydy.link/apple About Top Picks is hosted by two of the academics, film programmers and social researchers behind myDylarama film reviews. We use postcolonial, afro-pessimism, and Bourdieusian theories to discuss race and class in drama, documentary, mystery, and horror films. Now in its 10th year, myDy champions independent film and in using the medium as a platform for underrepresented and oft-ignored voices. myDy is official partner of the Clermont-Ferrand International Film Festival, and collaborates with The Media Fund, ByWire, and Emerging Filmmakers Night. Abla Kandalaft, co-founder of myDylarama, is a trilingual film programmer, researcher, journalist and translator. She is passionate about economics, environmental issues, migration, and politics; and has worked with BBC, Cannes Film Festival, and BFI. Coco Green is an aspiring academic and armchair critic. When not discussing racism in film, both on Top Picks and in the streets, she is writing about black counterpublics in hopes of completing her PhD.