Movie date: If you think dating during a global pandemic is difficult, consider the plight of Casablanca’s main characters, Rick Blaine (Humphrey Bogart) and Ilsa Lund (Ingrid Bergman), the ill-fated lovers attempting to escape German-occupied Morocco in the midst of World War II. Yet for all their obstacles, can you think of a more swoon-worthy […]
Movie date: If you think dating during a global pandemic is difficult, consider the plight of Casablanca’s main characters, Rick Blaine (Humphrey Bogart) and Ilsa Lund (Ingrid Bergman), the ill-fated lovers attempting to escape German-occupied Morocco in the midst of World War II. Yet for all their obstacles, can you think of a more swoon-worthy […]
By Erika Howsare Lisa Woolfork had been sewing for years when she came to a realization—or, rather, a resolution. “I would never again trade my humanity in exchange for doing something I love,” she says. As a Black sewist, she had too often found herself in a compromising position: trying to participate in white-dominated sewing […]
Few things are as American as tales of immigrants pulling themselves up by their bootstraps and making a life through hard work and sacrifice. For better or worse, our national penchant for embracing this narrative is hard to deny. Initially, Minari may seem like one of those all-too-familiar sagas—but Lee Isaac Chung’s keen eye for […]
DJ Williams Short Stories, Projekt Music For a musician who’s spent over a decade playing countless live shows, teaming up with industry heavy hitters from Questlove to Karl Denson, you wouldn’t think there’d be much ground left to cover. But Williams’ latest project, Short Stories, is something of a rebirth. It showcases his first time […]
Big screen: One of the many gems of our arts community is the Virginia Film Festival’s year-round series Beyond the Screen: A Virtual Conversation Series, which offers more of what we love about VAFF’s programming: special access to film industry bigwigs who discuss their work. Writer-director John Lee Hancock and producer Mark Johnson log in […]
Years before COVID-19 became a worldwide reality, Aja Gabel had pandemics on the mind. In 2011, Gabel—a fiction writer who earned her MFA at UVA two years prior—wrote and published “Little Fish,” a devastating short story that tracks a couple’s deterioration as both partners become afflicted with a mysterious, memory-destroying contagion. The story was an […]
Writer’s soujourn: Karan Casey has not let the pandemic quarantine keep her quiet. Since March 2020, the Celtic folk singer has been making videos and performing online, while continuing to promote her 2018 release Hieroglyphs That Tell the Tale. The former member of Irish supergroup Solas brings her voice and experience to a special performance […]
Yes mA’am: Tiger moms, dragon moms, best friend moms—no matter the style of parenting, when mama is happy, everyone is happy. Playwright/actress Courtney Jett Walker takes on a variety of approaches to motherhood in The Mom Journals, weaving together the monologues of five women in an original livestreamed play that reveals unity at the heart […]
Ashon Crawley’s work as an artist begins with feeling. Growing up in a vibrant community of Blackpentecostalism, Crawley has a life perspective shaped by spirituality and rituals channeled through the body. He points to singing loudly, dancing, shouting, and speaking in tongues as influences in the way he expresses himself creatively, and these physical actions […]
By Deirdre Crimmins There is a nugget of wisdom within the silly 1996 Michael Keaton film Duplicity. When explaining why one Keaton clone is not as smart as the others, he quips, “You know how when you make a copy of a copy, it’s not as sharp as…well…the original.” Given that The Dig is an […]