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From an artistic perspective, the past decade in movies is the decade of mumblecore. The movement of intimately scaled, often improvised, low-budget dramas and comedies that pull their actors from the lives and milieux of filmmakers who build stories around their personal experiences has become the energy-giving core of the American cinema. All decade long, aside from the reliably surprising masterworks by established filmmakers such as Martin Scorsese, Clint Eastwood, Spike Lee, Sofia Coppola, Wes Anderson, Jim Jarmusch, Frederick Wiseman, and Paul Thomas Anderson, there has been a profusion of daring films by younger filmmakers who are part of the mumblecore constellation, as well as a bunch of actors (and cinematographers and other artists) who emerged from those films.

The mumblecore generation has now entered, and in many ways transformed, the true mainstream of movies: Greta Gerwig, Terence Nance, Josephine Decker, Andrew Bujalski, Amy Seimetz, Barry Jenkins, Joe Swanberg, Lena Dunham, Adam Driver, Sophia Takal, Nathan Silver, Shane Carruth, David Lowery, Kate Lyn Sheil, Alex Ross Perry, Kentucker Audley, Lynn Shelton, Robert Greene, Ronald Bronstein, and the Safdie brothers, to name just a few. I could nearly have filled my decade list with their filmsbut, in the interest of spreading (and acknowledging) the love, I included only a few exemplary ones.

Of course, whats overarchingly important in this decade in movies reaches far beyond the movies themselves. Most crucially, this has been the decade of the public acknowledgmentwith the activism and advocacy of the #MeToo, Times Up, Black Lives Matter, and #OscarsSoWhite movements, along with the accusations against Harvey Weinstein and many other men in the mediaof the rotting foundation on which the film industry and society at large are built. The misrepresentations, whitewashings, banalizations, and exclusions that have sustained the Hollywood system have begun to come to light, and there have even been consequences for some of the perpetrators.

The response of the movie industry to this heroic and pain-filled activism has been not even quarter-assed. The Academy has taken much bruited yet minor steps to diversify its membership (which still named the white-savior movie Green Book Best Picture). Reboots of mediocre so-called classics get made with women in the leading roles and, often under mens direction and studio supervision, improve the rancid source material incrementally. Superhero productions feature three women striding silently into battle rather than none, and reliably include actors of color in roles of ahistorical and impersonal substance. There are the noteworthy exceptions, such as Black Panther, which, as good as it is, remains the one film that the systems defenders trot out as its justification.

Yet this decade has also seen, in surprising ways, the convergence of these two currents of activism and aesthetics in ways that I hope will continue in the next decade and beyond. Many of the substantial changes in the industry have come from the new generation of filmmakersyes, mumblecore. Its creators put into bold artistic action the fundamental premise that promises to turn minor shifts in the industry into a sea change: namely, the idea that the personal experience of filmmakers and a films participants is inseparable from the films process, its subject, its contents, and its style. (The idea is at work in documentaries, too.) The necessity, the urgency, of diversifying the ranks of directors is inseparable from the diversification of the spectrum of experienceand of artistic inspirationthat the cinema can offer. The first-person accounts, the daringly original artistry, and the self-aware and group-oriented activities of these filmmakers have opened the cinema to far more varied voices and ideas.

The rise of this generation of filmmakers has coincided with the rise of independent production, which has taken the place of studios for director-driven movies. At the same time, this shift hasnt helped many independent filmmakers from earlier years whose artistry is among the treasures of their times and whom the industry has nonetheless ignored. This decade was also the decade in which Julie Dash, Wendell B. Harris, Jr., Rachel Amodeo, Leslie Harris, Zeinabu irene Davis, and Billy Woodberry still didnt make their second features. Spike Lee long found himself shut out even of independent financing, using his own money for Red Hook Summer and then turning to Kickstarter before being, um, restablished, at a time when he was already long established and his projects should have been prime productions.

Nonetheless, independent productions, including both new filmmakers and the generations of veterans, have, for the most part, proved to be liberating for filmmakers, and that system is one of the reasons why American filmmaking has been so artistically innovative all decade longeven if much of that filmmaking has been an economic sidebar to Hollywood product.

The decade of independent filmmaking not coincidentally parallels the decade of the Marvel juggernaut, which began in 2008, with Iron Man, and soon thereafter came to dominate the box office, the release calendar, and multiplex screensthree factors that are askew to the art of movies. What renders the Marvel trend significant is that it has come to command the so-called discourse and has marked the careers of directors and actors. Superhero movies themselves may offer a modicum of pleasure, and, on rare occasion, even more. Some of them feature delightful effects, moments of symbolic resonance, playful humor, and even a few striking performances that mesh well with the stark (or, rather, Stark) writing. These pleasuresyes, authentically cinematicare, however, secondary to the over-all tone that these movies convey: highly managed production to the point of inhumanity. The superhero movies seldom transmit more than a glimmer of personal sensibility, and almost never do so through the essence of movies: images and sounds. The green screen and the computer graphics take precedence. Thats why many directors of less-than-distinctive visual sensibility get hired by Marvel to make superhero movies; they basically direct actors, while the visuals are farmed out to technicians and specialists. Thats also why the Marvel movies are, over all, deadening.

Many critics bemoan another of the decades trends, a related one: because the studios have turned to superheroes, childrens movies, franchises, and assorted other bombastic spectacles, theyve stopped making (or, actually, drastically cut back on) so-called mid-range dramas for adults. I find the complaint misplaced: there are plenty of good and substantial movies being made, not often by the studios but, rather, by independent producers, and also by streaming services. Meanwhile, that categorys place in the mainstream has been taken over by serious-minded television seriesand, with only a handful of exceptions, theyre basically the same thing: script-delivery systems, minus discernible directorial originality or inventiveness. When studios were the only game in town, directors went to them hat in hand, knowing that, with large budgets at stake, their films had to be commercial. Most of the best ones werent (one timely example: Martin Scorseses The King of Comedy, from 1983, cost nineteen million dollars to make and took in two and a half million dollars at the box office), and, as a result, the best directors careers were imperilled, often stalled, even completely shut down.

Now such ambitious movies of substance are rarely being made by studios but by independent producers, and theyre not being made on a mid-range budget but on low budgets. In exchange, directors are freer than ever to make movies without the distortions and the trivializations that the heavy hands of studio executives imposed. Filmmakers themselves, and their personal visions, are whats being sold by these independent producers, and, as a result, they can make movies as they see fitwhich is why there are many more American movies on the decade list than I expected going into it.

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The Twenty-Seven Best Movies of the Decade - The New Yorker

PLYMOUTH, Mass. (AP) Happy Thanksgiving to you in the land your forefathers stole.

Thats the in-your-feast message Native Americans are preparing to send as they convene their 50th annual National Day of Mourning in the seaside town where the Pilgrims settled.

United American Indians of New England has held the solemn remembrance on every Thanksgiving Day since 1970 to recall what organizers describe as the genocide of millions of native people, the theft of native lands and the relentless assault on native culture.

But Thursdays gathering will have particular resonance and, indigenous people say, a fresh sense of urgency.

Plymouth is putting the final touches on next years 400th anniversary commemorations of the Pilgrims landing in 1620. And as the 2020 events approach, descendants of the Wampanoag tribe that helped the newcomers survive are determined to ensure the world doesnt forget the disease, racism and oppression the European settlers brought.

We talk about the history because we must, said Mahtowin Munro, a co-leader of the group.

The focus is always on the Pilgrims. Were just going to keep telling the truth, she said. More and more nonnative people have been listening to us. Theyre trying to adjust their prism.

As they have on every Thanksgiving for the past half-century, participants will assemble at noon on Coles Hill, a windswept mound overlooking Plymouth Rock, a memorial to the colonists arrival.

Beneath a giant bronze statue of Massasoit, the Wampanoag leader in 1620, Native Americans from tribes around New England will beat drums, offer prayers and read speeches before marching through Plymouths historic district, joined by dozens of sympathetic supporters.

Organizers say theyll also call attention to the plight of missing and murdered indigenous women, as well as government crackdowns on migrants from Latin America and the detentions of children. Promotional posters proclaim: We didnt cross the border the border crossed us!

Past gatherings have mourned lives lost to the nationwide opioid addiction crisis, shown solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement and condemned environmental degradation.

The tradition was born of Plymouths last big birthday bash in 1970 a 350th anniversary commemoration that triggered angry demonstrations by native people excluded from a decidedly Pilgrim-focused observance.

Since then, the National Day of Mourning has become a louder, prouder and increasingly multiethnic affair in the community nicknamed Americas Hometown.

Although mostly peaceable, there has been tension. In 1997, 25 protesters were arrested after their march through town erupted into a melee with police.

There have also been colorful moments. Over the decades, activists have ceremonially buried Plymouth Rock in sand, boarded the Mayflower II a replica of the ship that carried the English settlers to the New World and draped Ku Klux Klan garb on a statue of William Bradford, a Pilgrim father who eventually became governor of the Plymouth Bay Colony.

In a likeminded tradition dating to 1975, tribes in the San Francisco area hold a similar ceremony called Unthanksgiving Day, gathering at sunrise on Alcatraz Island to recall how Native Americans occupied the island in protest for 19 months starting in November 1969.

Francis Bremer, a Pilgrim scholar and professor emeritus of history at Pennsylvanias Millersville University, thinks the nation is becoming more receptive to a side of the story thats too often been ignored.

Fifty years ago, for nonnative people, these were uncomfortable truths they didnt want to hear. Now theyre necessary truths, he said.

To help right old wrongs, Munros coalition is pushing what it calls the Massachusetts Indigenous Legislative Agenda. Among other things, the campaign includes a proposal to redesign the state flag, which critics say is repressive. It depicts a muscular arm wielding a broadsword over a Native American holding a bow.

Paula Peters, a Wampanoag writer and activist who isnt a member of the group that organizes the public mourning, sees progress in getting Americans to look past the Thanksgiving myth of Pilgrims and natives coexisting peacefully.

We have come a long way, she said. We continue to honor our ancestors by taking our history out of the margins and into the forefront.

___

Follow Bill Kole on Twitter at https://twitter.com/billkole .

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No thanks: Native Americans to hold 50th gathering of grief - Associated Press

The Progressive Era left a mixed record, largely because progressives were too hostile to political parties as crucial engines of political engagement and overly optimistic about the power of independent, rational judgment. But the eras reforms solved a particular problem of corrupt, top-down power at a particular moment. Each reformist movement can be expected only to resolve its most pressing problems in a way that keeps democracy going for a future era of reform

When future historians look back on the 2010s, they will observe three larger trends that paved the way for a new era of reform by clearing away the old consensus: a loss of faith in neoliberal economics, the breakdown of white male-dominated social and cultural hierarchies, and the collapse of the normal political process.

The financial crisis of 2008-09 and the decades-long stagnation of middle-class wages shattered the neoliberal faith that loosely regulated markets naturally bring widespread prosperity. In the last decade, leaders in both parties have turned (rhetorically, at least) against the global trade and financial system, mouthing the frustrations of voters.

The new tech giants now wield a kind of power as the central nodes of commerce and information that we havent seen since the railroads of the Gilded Age. For most Americans, the economy feels unfair. Capitalism has lost its luster, particularly for younger Americans. As in the Progressive Era, corporate domination and corruption are widely agreed to be a problem.

On the changing social and cultural order, both Me Too and Black Lives Matter represent profound and emblematic new social movements not just because they spotlighted and remedied longstanding injustices. They are also profound because they show how new technology and new forms of media have upended traditional power relationships by amplifying previously marginalized stories. For instance, the number of women, and particularly women of color, running for (and winning) public office has increased significantly over the last few years.

These cultural changes have provoked a backlash that contributed to Donald Trumps rise and the associated growth of alt-right movements. Fights over identity now define national partisan competition because they echo and reinforce fundamental divides in the ethnic and geographical coalitions of the two major parties and amplify the zero-sum stakes of two-party electoral conflict. The unceasing culture war is a battle over two very different and diverging visions.

On the political system itself: The conflicts over economics and culture are intimately tied to declining faith in politics as usual and the growing distrust of government. But in a politics oriented around zero-sum questions of national identity, and with razors edge control of Congress constantly at stake, compromise equates to surrender.

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Trumps Election May Have Been the Shock We Needed - The New York Times

A volunteer teaching a lesson on art and activism at Sacramento's Del Paso Manor Elementary School in September asked students to create a poster focusing on change they wanted to see in the school, according to statements from both San Juan Unified School District, which includes the school, and the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California.

The problem began when some students who created Black Lives Matter posters were told they needed to redo the assignment and didn't have their work displayed in the classroom, the ACLU says. In a letter sent Thursday, the group called out the school district for censorship, claiming the school is violating the First Amendment.

The ACLU claims the teacher specifically said posters relating to Black Lives Matter were "inappropriate for the class" and made four students who supported the movement in their work redo their posters. The teacher targeted these students based on the content of their poster, the ACLU says, which is therefore a violation of their First Amendment rights, according to the watchdog group.

The San Juan Unified School District says these students were asked to redo their posters because the artwork was focused on large social issues, rather than issues specifically related to the school. They were asked to redo the assignment not because of the content, but because the posters didn't meet the assignment's purpose. The district said in a statement that censoring a student's assigned work because of its content "would not be acceptable."

Other students with posters on topics like immigration and animal cruelty were also asked to redo their posters, a representative for the district told CNN.

The ACLU, though, says the fact that other posters were also redone doesn't matter.

It's still a content-based judgement if a teacher decides that a student's BLM artwork doesn't have anything to do with the school, said Abre' Conner, a staff attorney with the ACLU of Northern California. Banning artwork based on the content is a First Amendment violation.

"It's not up to (the teacher) to then decide that Black Lives Matter is off limits for something they wanted to see change," she told CNN.

The ACLU is representing both a student who was involved and the volunteer who was brought in to teach. The organization was originally made aware of the case by the volunteer, and then further investigated by speaking with a student whose assignment was rejected.

ACLU also claiming state education code violation

The ACLU isn't only charging the school with a First Amendment violation. The California Education Code also protects Black Lives Matter posters, the ACLU argues.

It states, in section 48907, "Pupils of the public schools, including charter schools, shall have the right to exercise freedom of speech and of the press including, but not limited to, the use of bulletin boards, the distribution of printed materials or petitions, the wearing of buttons, badges, and other insignia."

As long as the speech isn't "obscene, libelous or slanderous," the expression is protected, the code reads.

Under Section 201 of the code, California's public schools have an "affirmative obligation to combat racism, sexism, and other forms of bias, and a responsibility to provide equal educational opportunity."

The ACLU claims the Black Lives Matter posters fall under this category -- and are therefore protected.

The watchdog group says the teacher specifically referenced the Black Lives Matter posters in conversations with the volunteer, calling them "inappropriate and political." The teacher asked "whether students were getting shot at the school and demanded answers regarding why a presentation on Black Lives Matter was relevant" to the elementary school, the ACLU alleges. Political speech is protected by the state's education code.

He also threw away one of the student's posters, after saying the student could pick it up, the ACLU claims.

"Looking at those pieces together demonstrates that this was clearly more than asking students to redo the assignment," Conner said. "It seems that there was some kind of animus against the topic (of Black Lives Matter)."

The district said in its statement that some of the assertions made by the ACLU present "new information" and officials are investigating the incident further.

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Sacramento elementary school violated free speech by censoring Black Lives Matter posters, ACLU says - CNN

To witness was in fact one reason I was there. Cementing something in memory is one way of cementing it in the world. But I had another reason for going, too. My daughter was 12 on the day of Nias murder. She caught the train to school from the same BART station where Nia was killed. She called me that day in a panic, terrified and bereft and full of questions that I could not answer. Why did this happen to Nia? Why did this happen to black women? Why wouldnt this happen to her? I had no answers. I could do only what parents do: promise to protect my child. So I told her that I would go into the streets that hundreds, maybe thousands of us would go into the streets, and that we would be doing it for her. We would be doing it to show her that we would not let this happen.

It was tremendously important to me that my daughter stay home that evening, safe in her room, in her pajamas and slippers, watching Netflix, eating Flamin Hot Cheetos, texting with friends while we put our flesh on the hot downtown asphalt. No child should have to protect herself. It is our job to protect one another. And this is why I protested not to make noise, or make change, but in order for the person who could not, should not be in the streets to see me, to see us all, as proof that she is not alone in caring for her life. To attend that protest was an act of love, an experience that brought me closer to life. But it was set against a backdrop of death.

For black people, Lena Waithe told me, death is always present. We were sitting in her home in Los Angeles, discussing her screenplay for Queen & Slim. Black death is very interesting in that it is devastating, but at the same time, it illuminates us, she said. She named Trayvon Martin, Sandra Bland, Emmett Till, Fred Hampton and Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr., Tupac Shakur and Nipsey Hussle black figures whose deaths turned them into symbols, added tragic weight to their legacies. Four little black girls minding their own business playing in the basement of a church shook the world, she said, referring to the 1963 bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Ala. You dont want those little black girls to die, because who would want that? But if they didnt, would we be as free as we are right now? There are so many sacrificial lambs in our past. Its almost like black death is necessary to set us free. And I grapple with that. All the time. Thats why I think I had to write this.

When I asked the director, Melina Matsoukas, if she thought Queen & Slim was a hopeful story, she replied almost immediately: Its a black story. Rather than a dodge, this felt like a complete answer. In blackness, hope is often complicated by the intrusion of death, bloodshed, depression, incarceration, grief, brutality. You cannot for the good of your family, your kids, your loved ones, yourself keep your face fully toward the sun when you know the darkness is chasing you. In Queen & Slim, all good things are fleeting, and all love is set against bloodletting. The characters would like it to be otherwise, but they do not have a say.

I wanted you just to look at them like: Huh, thats me. Thats my mother, thats my brother, thats my sister, thats my cousin, Waithe told me. I want you to live with them, I want you to be scared with them. I want you to fall in love with them. The idea that we are supposed to identify with the characters on a screen is not new, but the idea that we black people are supposed to identify might still be. White directors have been speaking their language for decades, Waithe said. We have to learn it, we have to find ourselves in that narrative.

For Waithe, who grew up on the South Side of Chicago, finding herself in that narrative meant studying television made by people like Aaron Sorkin and the creators of Friends, David Crane and Marta Kauffman. After years acting and writing in Los Angeles, she became the first black woman ever to win a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Writing for a Comedy Series, for an episode of Aziz Ansaris Master of None loosely based on her own experience of coming out to her mother. That episode was directed by Matsoukas, a woman of mixed heritage Jamaican, Cuban, Jewish and Greek who had spent a decade directing music videos for stars including Lady Gaga and Rihanna. (Her memorable video for Beyoncs Formation, with its stylistic mixture of documentary and fantasy, arrived at the height of Black Lives Matter and, to many, deftly synthesized the visual power of the movement; its look echoes in Queen & Slim.) Matsoukas describes the film as not just about black love onscreen but also about the sisterly love of the two women who came together to make it. We can be a power, she told me of the faith she has in her artistic relationship with Waithe. Trust is really important, she said. Probably the only way I survive.

Queen & Slim holds its cinematic influences for all to see. It is tempting to compare it to both Bonnie & Clyde and Thelma & Louise, as the titles syntax seems to invite. Visually, Matsoukas says that she was inspired by Belly, another cinematic debut by a music-video director turned filmmaker, Hype Williams its gritty, ever-moving camera, its flashes of light and color. And Waithe lists among her influences films like Set It Off and Love Jones, both part of a 1990s wave that had dozens of black filmmakers telling stories that felt unaffected by the white gaze the same movies that my cousins and I watched over and over on lazy summer days, memorizing every line, partly because they were about us and partly because there were so few of them.

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Queen & Slim Could Be One of the Great Love Stories of All Time if You Let It - The New York Times