Kicking off August 1st, the Big Chill Festival at Eastnor Castle Park in Herefordshire, UK is just about the coolest — sorry for punning — festival I’ve heard about this summer. For one, that Icelandic art band Sigur Ros is having their film ‘Heima’ screened as part of BFI’s multi-media programme, which will run throughout the festival until August 3rd. I’ve been trying to see this film for months now. From what I’ve heard, it’s the visual equivalent of their gorgeously unearthly soundscapes.

On the film programme, Gypsy Caravan will also be screenings (stayed tuned here for a longer post and interview with the direction coming up!)

Also up, Orchestra Baobob, Thievery Corporation, Blk Jks, Lykke Li, Little Dragon, Natty, DJ Krush, Flying Lotus, and Leonard Cohen.

Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry & Adrian Sherwood are also on deck — visually and musically, respectively — as part of the ICA’s festival series. Sherwood’s spinning the dub soundtrack “On U” and Perry paints the visuals, literally, live.

Camp out here and get more festival info here.

Celebration, remembrance and cultural exploration are the prevailing themes of NYC’s second annual Roma Film Festival. The socially conscious fest — also known as the Gypsy Human Rights Film Festival — is set to screen over 25 films from all over the world that explore the conditions, lives and history of the Roma peoples.

One such film, “Searching for the 4th Nail“, engrosses the viewer by seeking to answer the question of what it means to be a gypsy. The film details the journey of filmmaker George Eli as he treks across America in search of the meaning of his people’s traditions so that he may teach his sons what it means to be a gypsy.

The Roma Film Festival runs from July 8th to the 15th. For more on location and screenings, check them out here.

With the glut of “designer toys” cluttering shelves and display cases and floating around the interweb, it has naturally become a bit more difficult for designers and artists to distinguish themselves from the plastic masses. Difficult, but not impossible.

Enter The Mirf.

No, it’s not a blaxploitation-era Kung Fu flick about a housing project super who’s visited in the night by a mystical cockroach—the body of which houses the spirit of an ancient Wu Shu master—who then blesses said super with near invincibility and the fighting skills of the 12 most powerful Shaolin monks of antiquity, thus allowing him to clean up the streets and kick some Vice Lord ass, ending their reign of terror, getting the girl and generally saving the day and all that jazz.

Though that would make a pretty dope flick, The Mirf’s got little to do with the stuff of Kung Fu legend. The brainchild of 1134NYC’s graffiti duo Mint and Serf and NYC’s art toy house Thunderdog Studios, the Mirf is truly the first of its kind: a graffiti-inspired, wall-mountable soft-vinyl toy. Available in four different colorways (with 200 pieces of each), the Mirf’s creators consider the piece more of a sculpture than a toy. Getting bump from design and graffiti world luminaries such as HAZE, Claw Money and Carlo McCormick, as a bonus the limited edition piece comes in so fresh and so clean packaging which features a slide out box, silver foil and a two-sided, flocked blister tray.

And to bleed off the steam that’s been building since hype over this paradigm-shifting piece of soft-vinyl deliciousness first buzzed about the Lower East Side a month ago, 1134NYC, Thunderdog Studios, Rogue Status and Vapors Magazine are putting their power rings together to drop the Mirf bomb in dual Left Coast launch events tonight and Thursday night. New York hip-hop trio Team Facelift will be holding it down at both events. With that said, expect lots of nudity (thank you Fat Jew), more than a few Jewish girls from Long Island, a tangerine bathrobe or two and possibly even some drunken, passionate Mirf chants (most likely in the nude). You know you love it.

I’ll admit it — I know it has been years since Bleach was the hot anime to be up on, but I still watch it.

So, just in case there are others out there who, like me, have not yet otherwise acquired fansub versions of the latest Bleach film, Memories of Nobody, check out the limited New York Premiere at Union Square tonight and tomorrow night.

Tite Kubo, Bleach’s creator, will be on hand both nights and tonight, June 11th, the films producer and character designer will also be speaking.

Bleach: Memories of Nobody
Wednesday, June 11th and Thursday, June 12th
7:30pm
Union Square Stadium 14
14th Street and Broadway, New York

Way back in November of last year, we did a post on BombIt!, a rapid-rising documentary that crossed the globe hunting down interviews with those elusive, top graffiti talents like Marka27 and Retna (L.A.); Cope 2, REVS and Taki 183 (NYC); Nishiba (Japan); Boleta and Jorge Tavares (Brasil); Blek le Rat (Paris); and about 40 others from the Netherlands, Mexico, Italy, Sweden, South Africa, Lebanon, Belgium, and Germany, to name a few.

Unprecedented in scope, BombIt! appeared to be the deserving heir to Wild Style’s throne when we saw it last November and now, with the TriBeCa Film Festival under it’s belt, Antidote Films by side and an L.A. Premiere this Friday night, BombIt! is blowing up bigger than ever.

The timing couldn’t be better. The graffiti culture documented by Charlie Ahearn’s classic was, in a sense, local to New York City and has since incubated on a global scale, rearticulated and reimagined on our local streets and neighborhood cultures.

Urban space still excludes folks and voices and as long as it does, graffiti will drop its bombs, but the messages and the means are changing. Hear what glocal graffiti means in the 21st century from the artists who give it voice.

BombIt! L.A. Premiere
Friday, June 6th
Laemmles Sunset 5
8000 Sunset Boulevard, West Hollywood
1:00//3:15//5:30//7:50//10:10pm

In one of those incredible, posthumus collaborations that not only transcends life, but geographies, generations and artistic geniuses, DJ Spooky will be performing an original score alongside Senegalese director and inspiration Ousmane Sembène’s film Borom Sarret next Tuesday, May 27th at the French Institute Alliance Française in New York.

Hosted by Sembène’s close friend, Dr. Mamadou Diouf — director of Columbia University’s Institute for African Studies — this intimate evening of homage and celebration is the perfect close to the French Institute Alliance Française’s revolutionary month devoted to World Nomads, which included an impromptu dance party with Nigerian-German-Roma-French soul queen Ayo; dance by Reggie Wilson and Andréya Ouamba; a tour of contemporary African cinema influenced by Sembène’s groundbreaking films; and a lively discussion of Transculuralism with TRACE founder and Editor-in-Chief, Claude Grunitzky.

TRACE has been proud to be a media partner for this series.

Homage to Ousmane Sembène with DJ Spooky
$10 FIAF members/$15 non-members
Tuesday, May 27th, 7:00 pm
The French Institute Alliance Française
Florence Gould Hall
55 East 59th Street, between Park and Madison Avenues
New York, NY

23 years in the making and nominated for the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance, Nerakhoon (The Betrayal) is just the sort of gorgeously shot, visually powerful film that should be expected from the first directorial stab of Ellen Kuras, whose career as a Directory of Photography led her through I Shot Andy Warhol and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.

Partnering with her Loatian language teacher, Thavisouk Phrasavath, the two tell the story of his family. It’s a strong and clear narrative, familiar to recently transposed families: a corrupt/unsteady government (Communism in Laos, in this case) hunting political ‘malcontents’; a family separated; emigrating to the U.S. and financially devastated by the process; and figuring out, one detail of daily life at a time, how to fit in while maintaining cultural practices.

With the strength of the story freeing Kuras and Phrasavath from visual conventions, the documentary also clips neatly from straight-forward cinema-verité to archival footage to scenes with an experimental edge — the seamed mix seeking a more “poetic” way of communicating.

Check out the sneak preview tonight at the IFC in New York, with Ellen Kuras and Thavisouk Phrasavath present.

Details here.

With her voice flickering soulfully, Ayo could melt stone. She has that kind of voice, entirely her own, that you will hear once and recognize instantly forever.

But as much as Ayo’s airy yet earthy chords are all her own, so too are her socially incisive lyrics, style and musical composition, which are transcultural to their core, drawing on her Roma and Nigerian parents, her Germanic childhood and her Parisian love.

Don’t miss this one. She’s opening the ground-breaking series, World Nomads, at the Alliance Francaise in New York next Thursday, May 1st.

Also up at World Nomads, which celebrates and interrogates world citizenship from Africa outwards, catch up with literary talents Nuruddin Farah, Abdourahman Waberi, and Chenjerai Hove; a stunning film series on legendary director Ousmane Sembène’s influence on African cinema; an intimate chat with Claude Grunitzsky, founder and Editor-in-Chief of TRACE; and the brilliant beats of DJ Spooky.

Check out of the full schedule of World Nomads here, Ayo’s talent here and DJ Spooky here.

Check out the gorgeous girls who graced our True Beauty issue cover! Exclusive backstage footage right here from the cover shoot with photographer Marc Baptiste.

It’s easy to go wrong with a fictional documentary about a white man saving a young woman of color. Real easy. So easy, in fact, that I’m pretty happy I don’t see such films very often.

Holly is different. No one, including the white man, Patrick (Ron Livingston), moralizes or apologizes except once, when he explains:

“Look, I know how it works alright? I walk by a 100 kids a day grabbing for handouts, fucking pushing bullshit souvenirs and I know you can’t help them, you can’t even try. You give them money, someone takes it…Then you develop this glazed-eye stare, you know? And you never stop. And then you’re fine. As long as you don’t look in their eyes you’re fine.”

And it’s pretty clear he’s uneasy that he did stop instead of continuing his live-and-let-survive gambling, boozing road trip to nowhere, Cambodia.

Holly (Thuy Nguyen), the 12-ish year-old girl he stops for in the infamous K11 prostitution village, doesn’t offer holy guidance or sit on a pedestal of corrupted innocence. She’s not a rosy-faced, wide-eyed little girl; she gets messed up, even if we never really see how deeply it goes. It’s part of the child/woman we have to accept her as, laced with cynical wit and steeped in stubbornness. She let her family in Vietnam sell her, after all, so they wouldn’t have to sell her little sister into back alley yumyums and boombooms.

For all the latent tragedy, however, Holly is surprisingly drama-free. We see Patrick, Holly and even Holly’s Mama San dealing and struggling with life — to uneven success and varying degrees of evil — not dramatizing cultural politics. There is a time and a place for that, but the strength of Holly is that it doesn’t go there.

The time and the place to check out Holly is next Friday, April 25th in NYC for the start of Holly’s limited run. E-mail TRACE here for your pair of tickets.