movies

A wedding at Lake Qarga, Kabul, in The Black Tulip.

Full Bloom: A Light Shines Through as The Black Tulip Blossoms Amidst Harsh Censorship and Brutal Rule by the Taliban

Afghanistan has no film industry, which makes a new movie called The Black Tulip, about good people seeking some kind of normal life in modern Kabul despite the constant threat of violence, destruction and despair, doubly dangerous to have made and inestimably valuable to watch. Filmed entirely in a country where women’s rights are still tested daily and cameras are so verboten that even a tourist’s throwaway Instamatic is an invitation to trouble—and produced, written and directed by a woman, no less!—this is a gripping experience as politically enlightening and emotionally involving as it is educational and beautiful to look at.  Read More

SOPA Opera

(AmericanCensorship.org)

The White House Signals Opposition to SOPA

In a blog post published Friday the Obama Administration signaled measured opposition to both the House-sponsored Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and its kissing cousin in the Senate, the Protect IP Act of 2011 (PIPA). With fairly clear language (for government officials), impossibly-titled administration officials Victoria Espinel, Aneesh Chopra and Howard Schmidt authored the response to two petitions directed at the legislation, stating: Read More

Interview

Post-Career Rehab, Marilyn Minter’s Seedy Side Shows

Wet pearls against red lips. Sparkling high heels walking through filthy water. A tongue encased in silver.

Before she became famous, Marilyn Minter was a product of much of the same “nightclub kid” scene of the 1970s and 1980s that begot Madonna. And the artist’s works–hyperrealistic close-ups of gleaming body parts–were as censored and controversial Read More