Student Filmmakers’ Work Shines At “BestFest”

Rae O'Hara, 18, student filmmaker from East Haven High School (Thomas Breen photo)

December 12, 2016 - Sitting in front of a white wall covered in band names, bumper stickers, and other vibrant logos and designs, each employee at Darkside Tattoo looked into Rae O’Hara’s camera with a smile and reflected on the art of tattooing.

Carlos Lopez became a tattoo artist when he realized that he didn’t want to be in the streets or go to jail anymore. Dan Adamczyk paints in watercolors or sculpts in clay when he gets tired of making drawing after drawing after drawing. Mikey Har made his first tattoo while stationed at an army barracks in Germany, drawing an L on his buddy’s left foot and an R on top of his right.

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Abandon All Hope? Not Just Yet

WNHH Pundit Panel

December 7, 2016  - Amid all the talk about impending dangers from the incoming regime in Washington, Karen DuBois-Walton offered a glimmer of hope Tuesday night: Perhaps, just perhaps, there is opportunity in uncertainty?

DuBois-Walton, who runs New Haven’s housing authority, was one of three expert speakers at a “community conversation” on what New Haven should expect from, and how it should respond to, President-Elect Donald Trump’s recent choices to run federal departments. DuBois-Walton specifically addressed the selection of neurosurgeon Ben Carson’s appointment to become the next secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).

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Deltas’ Message: Don’t Move; Organize

Dr. Khalilah Brown-Dean (Thomas Breen photo)

November 16, 2016 - One week after a nationwide wave of populist, conservative discontent helped Donald J. Trump win the presidency and Republicans retain majorities in both houses of the U.S. Congress, community leaders called for frustrated New Haveners to work together to protect abortion rights, protect immigrants, and prepare voters for the next election.

Dori Dumas, president of the Greater New Haven NAACP, called for more volunteers to help out with her branch’s year-round voter registration and civic education drives. Mary Elizabeth Smith, program director at Junta for Progressive Action, encouraged all New Haveners to participate in Junta’s regular Know Your Rights clinics. Susan Yolen, vice president at Planned Parenthood of Southern New England, asked for more friendly faces to volunteer at their Edwards Street offices on Saturdays to help welcome patients otherwise greeted by a weekly encampment of abortion protesters.

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Sanderistas Win 1

Thomas Breen photo

November 8, 2016 - Bernie Sanders was no longer in the running in the presidential election Tuesday, but some local activists inspired by his campaign regrouped to win a state representative seat.

The Sanderistas coalesced behind the campaign of first-time candidate Joshua Elliott, a Democrat who Tuesday won the vacant 88th state General Assembly District seat.

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On The Doors: LEAP Lesson, Biz Jitters

Thomas Breen photo

November 7, 2016 - When candidates in the only competitive local race knocked on doors this weekend, they heard about more than just local worries.

New Haven has no truly competitive local races in Tuesday’s general election. (Technically the Republicans do have a candidate on the ballot in the 93rd General Assembly District and someone on the ballot for Congress, but there have been scant signs of a real campaign.)

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Debate Grows Over Cop-Pig Art Decision

Gordon Skinner (Thomas Breen photo)

October 21, 2016 - After bothering at least one correctional worker and one police officer, Gordon Skinner’s depiction of a pig cop provoked a different kind of complaint at a Ninth Square gathering Thursday night:  Why was the work moved from its original perch?

That led to a broader set of questions: Whose voices matter, how much, and why?

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Hillary Road Trip Hits A Battleground

New Haven’s Oliphant and Colter at Dresher Clinton HQ. (Thomas Breen photo)

October 10, 2016 - Willow Grove, Penn. — Standing outside of an ACME supermarket on a cloudy Sunday afternoon, Carter Colter asked a question that he had been repeating to incoming and outgoing shoppers for the past three hours.

“Excuse me, are you registered to vote?”

Colter, 70, a retired advertising salesman who had joined a group of volunteers who traveled from New Haven down to the Philadelphia suburbs for the weekend to volunteer for the local Democratic Party, was wearing a yellow windbreaker emboldened by a deep blue Hillary Clinton sticker.

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Westville Tops Dixwell For “Ballers” Crown

Tyrone Wells takes a jump shot for the the Beaver Hills. (Thomas Breen photo)

October 6, 2016 - As Gregory Daniels leaned forward to sink yet another long-distance jump shot, an incredulous bystander shouted towards the police officers on the sidelines:  “All these cops on the court, and they still can’t stop this man from shooting!”

Frequent shots fired and moves so quick they seemed illegal erupted on the hoop courts at Edgewood Park late Wednesday afternoon — and the cops not only didn’t try to stop the action, but took part.

The shots had nothing to do with criminal activity, and everything to do with basketball. Specifically, with basketball played between police officers and members of the community.

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Trump Bombs In The Cask Republic

Clinton supporters watching debate at Cask Republic. (Thomas Breen photo)

September 27, 2016 - “Shut up,” someone at the front of the room shouted with exasperation as Donald Trump defended his self-proclaimed (and thoroughly fictional) early opposition to the Iraq War.

“No, keep talking,” the person sitting next to him responded with a smile. “This is good for us to hear!”

Such was the prevailing attitude on Monday night in a crowded side room at Cask Republic on Crown Street, where dozens of New Haveners gathered to laugh and cheer and grimace as they watched the first presidential debate between candidates Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton.

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Bike Co-op Adds The Silver Screen

Audience assembles at Bradley Street Bike Co-op (Thomas Breen photo)

September 19, 2016 - Halfway through a presentation on the many ways that the Hill neighborhood has changed over the past 100 years, architect-in-training Jonathan Hopkins paused to ask the question that everyone in the audience had been considering for the past hour and a half.

“Why the city chose the site they ended up choosing for the new John C. Daniels School, I’m not quite sure,” he mused. “Because there were obviously people living there. We just watched a documentary about them.

“On the one hand, I can understand why the city wanted to remove vacant buildings from the neighborhood. But the school project simply didn’t accomplish that.”

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Cops, East Rockers Connect Over Koffee

Sgt. Shafiq Abdussabur and Zora Kim (Thomas Breen photo)

September 18, 2016 - Christine Kim rounded the corner of Humphrey and Orange Streets to find seven cops standing outside of St. John’s Episcopal Church.

She didn’t know it, but they’d come to talk with her — and other East Rock neighbors.

“Is there an emergency?” Kim asked the first uniformed officer she approached.

“Yes there is,” Sgt. Shafiq Abdussabur replied with a smile. “The emergency is that you have to attend this party right now.”

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Diehard Activists Keep A Flame Berning

Aliyya Swaby photo

July 27, 2016 - As Democrats from around the country nominated Hillary for Clinton for president with the help of former rival Bernie Sanders, Bruce Carter was out in the street declaring, “Bernie or BUST!”

The Texan father and husband said he would have gone through the motions of voting for Hillary Clinton a few months ago. Instead, he decided to rally fellow black voters behind the banner of a candidate no longer running at an emotional rally at Thomas Paine Plaza Tuesday afternoon, coinciding with Clinton’s formal nomination inside the hall at the Democratic National Convention.

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Day 1 DNC Diary: Cracks Beneath “Unity”

Lucy Gellman Photo

July 26, 2016 - While protesters marched the downtown streets here Monday, decrying the presidential nomination system as rigged and nominee Hillary Clinton as corrupt, officials took the stage at the opening of the Democratic National Convention a few miles south and proclaimed, one by one, the virtues of a unified party.

The words didn’t always match the reality on the ground — in the street, or event in the halls of the Wells Fargo Center.

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Filmmaking Tests A Marriage

Russ and Li Martin (Thomas Breen photo)

August 3, 2016 - Russ D and Li Martin spend most weekends simply as husband and wife. Last weekend, they tried on a new pair of roles for their decade-old relationship: competitive filmmakers.

From Friday through Sunday, each spouse led a team of colleagues, friends, and other eager volunteers through the sixth installment of the 48 Hour Film Project New Haven, an annual weekend-long competition that challenges participating teams to write, shoot, edit and produce a four-to seven-minute film in two days flat.

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Local Filmmakers Prepare Students For Fall Film Festival

Thomas Breen photo

June 30, 2016 - Surrounded by shelves upon shelves of DVDs, with the Great Directors section to his left and Cult Classics to his right, 17-year-old filmmaker Caden Rodems-Boyd reflected on the challenges of making a feature-length movie while just a junior in high school.

“It was really, really difficult,” he said, looking out at a small but rapt audience of fellow high school students who had gathered at Best Video on Whitney Avenue on Tuesday night.

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Criminal Justice Reformers Rally For Sanders

Barbara Fair (Thomas Breen photo)

April 25, 2016 - A day before Bernie Sanders drew over 10,000 supporters to a mass rally on the Green, some of his local backers held a small rally of their own to highlight theirs and the campaign’s call for criminal justice reform.

Criminal-justice reform activist Barbara Fair said she organized the rally outside the federal courthouse on Church Street Saturday to draw attention to the differences between Hillary Clinton’s and Sanders’ histories and approaches to criminal justice reform. Sanders and Clinton face off in Tuesday’s Democratic presidential primary in Connecticut.

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Love Of Country Hits The Screen

April 20, 2016 - When the widow of Cuban filmmaker Tomás Gutiérrez Alea reached out to Margherita Tortora, senior lecturer in Spanish at Yale, to ask if she would consider a celebration of her late husband’s work on the 20th anniversary of his death, Tortora jumped at the opportunity. She knew that she had limited resources to put on a film festival, but that hadn’t stopped her in the past. Alea’s widow, the director and actress Mirta Ibarra, was excited. This way, both students and members of the public could benefit from a re-evaluation of the work of one of the most influential directors in Cuban history.

This Thursday through Saturday, those months of planning will come to fruition when a local series about contemporary Latin American cinema comes to a close with a five-film tribute to Alea, showcasing the Cuban director’s resonant, ambivalent patriotism. Four of his most celebrated films, as well as a documentary about the director, will play at Yale’s Luce Hall auditorium at 34 Hillhouse Avenue. All of the screenings are free and open to the public.

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From Lender’s Bagels To Hollywood

Jay Lender (Better Served Cold Productions photo)

March 24, 2016 - Born into a family that revolutionized American breakfast culture by popularizing the bagel, Jay Lender — whose feature film debut, They’re Watching, comes out in limited release on Friday — knew from an early age that he wanted to be an artist.

The son of Murray Lender, the innovative, long-time marketing director for New Haven’s Lender’s Bagel Bakery, Jay found succor for his budding creative interests in watching one of his father’s employees illustrate the marketing campaigns that helped “bagelize America.”

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Individual Dignity, The Movie(s)

Karyl Evans (Phil Nolt photo)

February 22, 2016 - How do you stay focused when making a movie about a musical work based on a collection of poems written about the life of a World War II medic?

For local five-time Emmy Award winning documentary filmmaker Karyl Evans, the answer is easy: Focus on the people. Even in a multilayered work like Letter from Italy, 1944: A New American Oratorio, a film about art, war, and PTSD that Evans released in 2015.

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Wait—Is This Rubio ... Or Malloy?

Marco Rubio (Lucy Gellman photo)

February 5, 2016 - Portsmouth, N.H. –  “Talk to me,” an undecided New England Republican implored Marco Rubio, “about the war on drugs.”

In the process, he handed the ascendant Republican presidential candidate an opportunity to speak to New England moderates while holding on to his conservative base — the challenge that Rubio faces as he seeks to clear the field of party establishment-backed contenders in next Tuesday’s New Hampshire primary on the heels of a strong showing in this week’s Iowa caucuses.

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