Portside

John Lewis declares that, during the 1960s, he was arrested “a few times.” Then the elder statesman and éminence grise of the civil rights movement pauses before correcting himself in front of the large Dallas crowd he’s addressing: “40 times…"

“Homemade,” a wondrous and mostly satisfying anthology of 17 short films made round the world over the past two months - reveal a scattershot collage of the world in 2020.

"I stand with Black Lives Matter but still, as I watched the obligatory scene of Vietnamese soldiers getting shot and killed for the thousandth time, I thought: Does it make any difference if politically conscious Black men kill us?"

Two recent documentaries, both now streaming, try to unpack the McCarthyite Trump-whisperer—progenitor of the postmodern political world we now inhabit.

Greg Tate explores the shifting struggles for black equality – and identity – presented in the Swedish television archives (filmed from 1967 - 1975) originally released as a film in 2011 and currently streaming on Amazon Prime and YouTube.

A new film set in Djibouti City presents a searing class critique of Somali girlhood.

Spike Lee has spent nearly four decades and more than 30 films reckoning with the jagged and brutal course of history. Now, in the middle of a global calamity, and with a new film, “Da 5 Bloods", he revisits the Vietnam War.

Elliza Hittman’s coming-of-age story about a teenager seeking an abortion is heartbreaking and painfully authentic. Hittman has described her film as “a narrative about a girl carrying around a lot of pain and burden, and the lonliness of it all".

'The Assistant': Julia Garner excels as a junior assistant to a predatory media mogul boss in Kitty Green’s powerfully understated #MeToo drama.

A new documentary series uses individual cases of false convictions to reveal a terrifyingly unreliable criminal justice system.