Information is power. Our mission at Portside is to seek out and to provide information that empowers you -- that empowers the left. Every day we search hundreds of sources to connect you with the most interesting, striking and useful material. Just once a year we appeal to you to contribute to make it possible to continue this work. Please help.
“Boy Erased,” adapted from Garrard Conley’s memoir of the same title, tackles the subject of conversion therapy, a technique that is a mix of religious dogma and dubious science whose cruelty and ineffectiveness are amply documented.
It is, after all, about a slice of red-state America at a time of fierce political polarization. In the wake of the 2016 election, traveling to Monrovia—a mostly white town in the vice president’s home state—was hardly an idle or random decision.
First Man is a paean to American greatness. It does include a montage of protesters demanding that the money on NASA be spent to help the poor and hungry, set to Gil Scott-Heron’s “Whitey on the Moon”. That might have been a good title for the film.
Actress Stenberg lives up to her promise in a hard-hitting adaptation of Angie Thomas’ bestselling YA novel about a police shooting and racial strife.
Warrior Women is about progress, and this extends to the personal sphere as well as the public. It is a progress that comes with respect for the women that came first--the ability to use knowledge of the past to build something even more powerful.
Confronting Steve Bannon in a cold, empty room for the duration of an unsettling portrait, Morris presses the alt-right icon to justify the racist ideology behind the machinations that propelled Donald Trump to the White House.
Farenheit 11/9's strongest sections cede the floor to the progressive activists and insurgent political figures whom he paints as the country’s best, and perhaps last, hope for salvation.
O’Dell was a close, crucial adviser to Dr. King. The axe nevertheless fell with demands on King to drop this trusted adviser. Speaking softly, O'Dell minces no words about the role of anti-communism then, how much it cost him and the Black movement.
BlacKkKlansman is a furious, funny, blunt and brilliant confrontation with the truth. It’s an alarm clock ringing in the midst of a historical nightmare, and also a symphony, the rare piece of political popular art that works in all three dimensions.
For Asian and Asian-American viewers, "Crazy Rich Asians" which opens on Aug. 15, is important not just as something of a cinematic Halley’s comet — before “Joy Luck Club” in 1993, there was “Flower Drum Song” in 1961, and now what?
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