Eat, for This Is My Body, Michelange Quay’s binary heavy film acts more like a poem than a movie. There is no plot to speak of and we instead follow images and sounds that lead us on a journey of post-colonialism of the Haitian variety. The scenes aren’t all disparate though, we see the same characters throughout the piece, and together they help to build a tension that is both erotic and filled with disgust. Those characters include an old woman or matriarch of an old estate (amazingly played by Catherine Samie), a young male servant, a younger woman called Madame and the troop of young black boys she instructs.

The feature film is a first for Quay, who was born in Queens and is a first generation Haitian. The film is filled with a cinematic language that strays from convention and instead offers up it’s own rules of comprehension. The mishmash of images and auditory emphasis on sounds that are wet and bring the focus to the human aspect of things, seem fitting considering how the “story” came to be

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The New Directors/New Films festival starts today! Put on by The Film Society of Lincoln Center and MOMA, the festival is:

Dedicated to the discovery and support of emerging artists. New Directors/New Films has earned an international reputation as the premiere festival for works that break or re-cast the cinematic mold. Twenty-six features and six shorts, handpicked by curators of the Film Society of Lincoln Center and The Museum of Modern Art, made the cut this year, as the 37th edition of this non-competitive program spotlights the very best in the current class of new directors, actors, producers, writers, cinematographers, editors and more. We expect many of the filmmakers will be attending the festival to discuss their work first hand. [Filmlinc]

The line-up looks pretty great this year, with many films lining up with Takepart’s motto of media inspiring social action. Below are the films I plan on seeing, and interestingly enough, they all coincide with ideas that encourage folks to examine the world we live and make it better.

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