Culture Archives - Page 17 of 24 - Mississippi Free Press

Culture

‘Stepping Into the Sweet Unknown’: Black Producer Brought Bruce Willis, But Wants to Do More for Capital City

“I felt like if I went to Jackson, I could possibly build a team, and we can actually make some amazing things in Jackson, Mississippi, that would be world renowned. And I felt like once it got going, I would be seen as a big fish in a small pond and be one of the first people sought after as opposed to going places where it’s already built,” Curtis Nichouls said. So, he moved to back Jackson nine years ago and recently started a production company called Sweet Unknown South Studios.

Aliyah Veal May 7, 2021

Culture

A Father’s Story: Chinese Family Confronts Jim Crow, U.S. Exclusion in Mississippi Delta

The film “Far East Deep South” follows Charles Chiu and his family’s journey from California to Mississippi in hopes of finding answers about his father and the filmmakers’ grandfather K. C. Lou. While the family learns about the life of K.C. Lou and his contributions to the surrounding communities in Pace, Miss., just northwest of Cleveland in Bolivar County, they also learn some harsh truths about life for Asian Americans living in the deep South during Jim Crow.

Aliyah Veal May 4, 2021

Culture

Repurposing Racist Relics: Betye Saar’s ‘Call and Response’ Exhibit Invokes Black Power

Demeaning images of the past—Black mammy figures, minstrel toys and more—are reclaimed and repurposed in the art of Betye Saar. In that object-to-art transformation, they’re given a strength that speaks volumes in the present, particularly now as social injustices involving race and gender grab daily headlines.

Sherry Lucas April 15, 2021

Culture

Forging Economic Empowerment: New Satellite Coding Academy Opens in South Jackson

Changing the gender wage gap statistics is a desired outcome as DSC Training Academy and Mississippi Coding Academy partner to open a new coding campus in south Jackson. The new academy’s location will operate out of the workforce development center on Interstate 55 South Frontage Road and will offer convenience for potential coders from south Jackson, Hinds County and the metro area, DSC Training Academy President Willie Jones said at a virtual press conference on April 8.

Aliyah Veal April 14, 2021

Culture

A Mississippi Reckoning: Film Shows Battle to Change State Flag About Identity Itself

In “Look Away, Look Away,” filmmaker Patrick O’Connor captures the battle to change, or keep, Mississippi’s state flag by turning his lens on Mississippians who made the flag fight their fight. In five years of filming, he came to see the debate as about more than the flag. The story is about identity itself: “It’s about who you think you are,” O’Connor says.

Ellen Ann Fentress March 26, 2021

Culture

‘We Can Bring Los Angeles to Us’: Building Natchez into a Film and Education Destination

Director Tate Taylor has recognized the need and appetite for local Mississippians to get into the film industry. The realization led him to start Film Natchez, a nonprofit organization geared toward pairing Mississippians with professionals in the film industry.

Aliyah Veal March 25, 2021

Culture

‘The Stories Have Been Lost’: Scott Ford Houses Preserve Power, Legacy of Black Midwives

With the renovation, the organization hopes to have a permanent place to house “Reclaiming Our Legacy & Shifting the Narrative of Mississippi Granny Midwives: A Storytelling Project.” The W.K. Kellogg Foundation is providing a $50,000 grant to help document the stories of families in the state through interviews with families or communities that had midwives. The dialogue will focus on “granny” midwives and their roles in births as well as their interactions with children. The project will focus on the Jackson Prairie, Mississippi Delta, Black Belt and Loess Hills regions of Mississippi.

Torsheta Jackson March 16, 2021

Culture

Piercing the Inner Wall: Sweeping Exhibition Gives Gulf Coast Artist Dusti Bongé Her Due

In 65 paintings, 29 works on paper and three sculptures, “Piercing the Inner Wall: The Art of Dusti Bongé,” available through May 23, covers the range of her work as Mississippi’s first consistently Modernist artist, progressing through periods of figurative and Cubist work, Surrealism and finally Abstract Expressionism, from the 1930s through the early 1990s.

Sherry Lucas March 16, 2021

Ashley Haywood in front of the Emmett Till Historic Intrepid Center in Glendora, Mississippi

Culture

No More Silence: ‘Great Migration Baby’ Publishes Her Answer to the ‘Green Book’ for Black Travelers

Victor Hugo Green’s “The Negro Motorist Green Book” was the guidebook for African American roadtrippers during the Jim Crow era. The guide offered services and places that were friendly to African Americans, while also highlighting the dangers of travel with threats such as whites-only sundown towns. Author and journalist Deborah Douglas has published a new kind of civil-rights guide.

Aliyah Veal March 15, 2021

Category: Culture

‘Stepping Into the Sweet Unknown’: Black Producer Brought Bruce Willis, But Wants to Do More for Capital City

A Father’s Story: Chinese Family Confronts Jim Crow, U.S. Exclusion in Mississippi Delta

Repurposing Racist Relics: Betye Saar’s ‘Call and Response’ Exhibit Invokes Black Power

Forging Economic Empowerment: New Satellite Coding Academy Opens in South Jackson

A Mississippi Reckoning: Film Shows Battle to Change State Flag About Identity Itself

‘We Can Bring Los Angeles to Us’: Building Natchez into a Film and Education Destination

‘The Stories Have Been Lost’: Scott Ford Houses Preserve Power, Legacy of Black Midwives

Piercing the Inner Wall: Sweeping Exhibition Gives Gulf Coast Artist Dusti Bongé Her Due

No More Silence: ‘Great Migration Baby’ Publishes Her Answer to the ‘Green Book’ for Black Travelers

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