Cinereach
Local filmmakers Robert Devor and Charles Mudede are having a great year. They recently won The Stranger’s Genius Award for filmmaking, and now they have been honored with the prestigious Cinereach Grant for their film Untitled Sarah Jane Moore Project. The film is about former radical leftist and FBI agent Sarah Jane Moore, who attempted an assassination of Gerald Ford in 1975. She is the only woman to take a shot at an active president and served 32 years in prison for her attempts. The filmmakers have collaborated on such award winning films as Zoo and Police Beat. Follow the link above for more information about the film as well as Devor and Mudede’s work.
What the bulk of the great albums of this year have in common is each is organized by a ruling concept. This does not mean they are concept albums, in the sense of Dr. Octagon’s Dr. Octagonecologyst, Handsome Boy Modeling School’s So, How’s Your Girl, and other works designed by Dan the Automator. No, the rappers of the current moment are not playing roles that can be easily discarded on the next concept album. We get strange truths from the concepts made by these rappers/producers—the black Han Solo, Shabazz, the Dro Bots, the Cigar Rock Star. For them, the new world around us, a world that has gone through considerable changes, demands this unified and systematic approach to rap and beats.