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Sexual Violence
The Necessity To Speak
I see them every day, the wounded women in the supermarket or in the bookstore, the children beaten to a whimper until all life has grayed in them. I’ve learned to recognize Fear’s signature scrawled across their faces, the way one learns to recognize a man who walks with a “prison shuffle.”
February 1991Drinks
“I’m going to do you to death,” he said. “How about that. Not because you’re pretty, either, because you’re not, but because you can’t stop me. How about that.”
January 1990Being Wrong
Hitting your sister, watching the rice boil, jumping over the subway turnstiles
October 1989Kindred Spirits
“Anchoring,” going to a secondhand store, watching the boys play pool
February 1989No Bars To Freedom
Bo Lozoff’s Letters To And From Prisoners
Dear Billy,
Nice to hear from you. You know, you said that you were a coward and a real piece of shit, but if that’s so, then who was the sensitive, intelligent human being who was moved to tears by the story of Gandhi’s courage? That takes a lot of courage and openness, too, you know.
Through The Bars
Letters From Prison
I can’t know for sure what you need to do. All I’m giving you is my opinion, and you have to sort it all out and make your own decisions. But I do want to be straight with you about what my opinion is, because it’s 180 degrees from how you interpreted it. I think you should try a radical change of environment and interests. If you keep revolving your entire life around the trauma you went through, it might make good Hollywood movie stuff, but I don’t think it will meet your deepest needs.
February 1984The Arts: The Politics Of Filmmaking
In the course of reading a book we have time to change our mind about things, or anyway, the author has time to change our minds. But seeing a film is different. Not only the brevity of the event, but the limited intellectual possibilities of the medium itself make it almost impossible for a filmmaker to challenge (uproot, enlighten, deepen?) the filmgoer’s attitude about the way things are.
March 1978
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