Essays – ALLIANCE OF WOMEN FILM JOURNALISTS

KPOP DEMON HUNTERS – Essay by Lynn Venhaus

November 24, 2025November 26, 2025 Lynn Venhaus animation, Chris Appelhans, KPop Demon Hunters, Maggie Kang, musical, netflix, Sony Pictures Animation

Mention the pop culture juggernaut KPop Demon Hunters, and you will immediately be considered “skibidi,” “sigma” or “Gucci,” which is in old-fashioned parlance, ‘cool.’ Dive into this dynamic animated supernatural-action-musical that follows a fashionable girl group who tours the world and moonlights vanquishing demons through sword fights and their bravery. As a unique global and cultural hybrid, KPop Demon Hunters is redefining animation and its fan base continues to broaden. Wouldn’t it be a noteworthy turning point for a female-driven project to blaze another trail?

Essays Guest Posts

HORROR’S WARNING ABOUT IGNORING WOMEN – Essay by Stephanie Malone

April 11, 2025April 17, 2025 Guest Post CARRIE, guest post, hereditary, horror, promising young woman, rosemary;s baby, Stephanie Malone, the babadook, the female gaze, the lodge

A chillingly common thread in many iconic horror movies is the refusal to believe women when they voice their fears, their suspicions, or their trauma. This narrative mirrors a grim reality rooted in history: women have long struggled to have their experiences, especially those regarding mental health and abuse, taken seriously. The implications go beyond mere storytelling. Statistics from organizations like the National Network to End Domestic Violence reveal that over 70% of domestic violence cases are never reported, often because survivors fear that they will not be believed or that they will face retribution. Let’s dive into some unforgettable horror films where disbelief in a woman’s voice escalates the terror.

Essays Guest Posts

A REAL PAIN, Holocaust Tourism & Gaza – Essay by Yael Friedman (Guest Post)

March 26, 2025May 6, 2025 Guest Post A Real Pain, Gaza, guest post, Holocaust tour, jesse eisenberg, Jewish roots, Kieran Culkin, lithuania, Poland, the female gaze, vilna, vilnius, Yael Friedman

A Real Pain utilizes the familiar tourist trip as a convincing canvas. Nailing down the charmingly Bohemian Benji (Kieran Culkin) by booking a conventional tour by the more conventional cousin David (Jesse Eisenberg), made sense. It was a perfect vehicle for allowing their dynamics, personalities, the themes of memory and trauma tourism, to unfold. The exposition in this screenplay was a master class, even though the actors are laying versions of themselves, or because of it. It’s a neat sleight of hand to turn a character you think you know into one entirely invented. As fun as Benji was and as envious as the more straitlaced and neurotic David got, the tragedy of Benji’s character pierced deeply. He endeared and broke and enraged you in equal measure. We never really find out why Benji has been cast adrift in life, and we don’t need to. We meet him where he is and worry for what is next. Just enough is given to make it real and utterly palpable.

Essays Guest Posts Reviews

DAHOMEY – Essay by Yael Friedman (Guest Post)

January 24, 2025May 6, 2025 Guest Post art restitution, benin, dahomey, documentary, guest pst, international oscars, Malkenzy Orcel, mati diop, mubi, Wally Badarou, Yael Friedman

Dahomey, the new beautiful documentary from director Mati Diop, addresses the forces that wrested history from its original owners, and interrogates what it means to try and recompense for the past. The film plays witness to an unprecedented moment – the return by France of 26 objects (26 out of many thousands) to Benin – the once Kingdom of Dahomey (1600-1904). It is the first such return of the cultural heritage colonial powers plucked from their African vassal states. The Europeans carved up a continent and removed its sacred objects (among other sins), sending them across the Atlantic to sit in sterile vitrines in grand galleries, tourists strolling by once-mighty gods.

Essays

Gena Rowlands in A QUESTION OF LOVE – Essay by Loren King

November 11, 2024November 21, 2024 Loren King A Question of Love, Anita Bryant, Gena Rowlands, Jane Alexander, lesbian custody battle, Mary Jo Risher

When Gena Rowlands died in August, the many tributes to her singular, magnificent career began, rightfully, with her Oscar-nominated performances in A Woman Under the Influence (1974) and Gloria (1980). That was usually followed by her other significant films, such as Faces and Opening Night. But. there wasn’t much mention of Rowlands’ television work. But for anyone who came of age as a cinephile, or feminist, or LGBTQ, or just an emphatic human, Rowlands’ small screen roles arguably left the most indelible mark.

Essays

NOSTALGIA FOR THE LIGHT and Chile’s Atacama Desert – Diane Carson reports

October 18, 2024October 19, 2024 Diane Carson Atacama Desert, Augusto Pinochet, chile, chilean films, documentary, nostalgia for the light, patricio guzman

Chilean writer/director Patricio Guzmán’s 2010 documentary Nostalgia for the Light provides a dramatic introduction to the Atacama Desert in northern Chile, located between the Andes Mountains and the Pacific Ocean. The film surveys astronomers interrogating origins of the cosmos, archeological evidence, and the heartbreaking unearthing of bone fragments of Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet’s murdered victims, their bodies discarded in the desert. The highest desert in the world, averaging over 8200 feet and the driest nonpolar desert in the world, Atacama all but defies description. Even having seen Nostalgia for the Light before my recent visit, nothing prepared me for the week I spent experiencing its diverse ecosystems and historical richness.