In 2009, filmmaker Yasha Aginsky accompanied the great old-time musician Mike Seeger and his wife Alexia on recording trips through the Southeastern United States, documented by Yasha and his assistant, Slava Basovich. A tireless collector, performer and advocate of old-time music and musicians, Mike was on a mission to record a survey of contemporary traditional-style banjo playing.
After the untimely death of his brother by way of an ambush in Kandahar, Afghanistan, the protagonist, ‘81’(Alan Ritchson) unsuccessfully makes several attempts to become an Army Ranger. On his last mission to complete the Ranger selection process he and his squad encounter an otherworldly ‘soldier’.
The short documentary and second place winner of the Incluvie Short Film Festival, Gender Outlaw: A Bodysurfing Story, challenges any simplistic understanding of trans people.
Like all modern societal phenomenons, it started with a meme. This one highlighted that when there’s a mom in a Pixar film, she is almost without fail given striking curves that highlight the bottom half of her body following a minuscule waist. From Elastigirl to the skeletal Mama Imelda, the animation giant’s artists seem to have a fixation on making exaggeratedly curvy maternal characters.
What are we willing to walk through to see our dreams come to pass? Our minds might be so wholly alive with the passions we carry and the plans we make to see these things become all we wish them to be, yet life doesn’t always want to come alongside. Instead, obstacles arise, both physical and mental, which attempt to dissuade us or even prevent us from moving forward, stalling or stagnating the momentum to achieve what we desire. The age-old question remains….can we overcome? Or will we BE overcome?
Facing the world with our fair share of uncertainties and/or apprehensions, many of which, sadly, may be well-founded, is nothing to sneeze at. Influenced and buffeted by the constant barrage of social media, fake news, and general upheaval present in our contemporary reality, what IS real and what's not becomes a blur.
Clearly, in the end, Allison raised a responsible child because she knew that her "friend" was doing something that made her uncomfortable and turned away from her. No worries, Super mom was already one step ahead of her.
