The Shelburn Network 

Coverage from the Austin Film Festival, highlighting some panels and films that emphasized the importance of diverse and inclusive storytelling.

Eddington attempts to capture how media is intertwined with the uncomfortable present.

We are incredibly blessed that this movie is available for us to see, and we should take advantage of the opportunity we’ve been given. 

The Gates, John Burr’s new thriller film, is a disturbingly realistic portrayal of three Black twenty-somethings - Derek (Mason Gooding), Kevin (Algee Smith), and Tyon (Keith Powers), as they accidentally take a wrong turn into a gated community that’s more like a modern-day sundown town. The three friends witness a variety of crimes in their new surroundings, including an attempted homicide and an attempted rape. As they attempt to alert the authorities and do the right thing, they are thwarted at every turn by the worst horror stories of American conservatism - racist white suburbanites, reckless gun violence, corrupt police, religious mania, and a megalomaniacal pastor. 

A complex, realistic, and loving mother-daughter relationship is at the heart of this story about Black pageants and the fight for a better future.

America is the crux of the storyline: she is the only person in existence with the power to jump between universes. As central as America is to the Multiverse of Madness story, she somehow didn’t get that much to do.