Chasing Time (2025)

This short documentary was short listed for an Academy award in 2026, and while it did not make the final list, it is an excellent documentary all the same. Back in 2012, Jeff Orlowski documented famed photographer James Balog as he setup his Extreme Ice Survey, a series of remote cameras set to record the immediate effect of climate change on the world’s glaciers. With stunning visuals and pioneering use of time-elapsed photography, Chasing Ice served as direct evidence of the warming of the planet. Images showed millennia-old ice sheets radically transforming over just a few years, contributing to the rise of sea levels, and making manifest the way the world is undergoing fundamental transformation due to environmental changes. This film is slightly more philosophical and ruminative. Directed in collaboration with Sarah Keo, the film sees Jeff and James return to Jakobshavn Glacier to remove the camera and close a chapter in both their work and their relationship. It’s a touching film about mentor and mentee, and manages in its compact running time to provide a rich portrait of their collaboration, additional stunning views of their otherworldly locations, and an even more open-eyed look at the catastrophic changes that have occurred over the last decades in this majestic environ. It is all set in motion by James’ cancer diagnosis, which makes him aware of his own limited time frame. The story and the photography are both beautiful.

Mother Mary Comes To Me by Arundhati Roy

This is a very raw memoir written by an author who knows how to tell a story. She left home the moment she reached legal age and never went back. She is here to tell you why. She was born in Shillong in northeastern India to a Bengali Christian father who worked on the tea plantation, and a Malayali mother. Her father was a ne'er do well, and her mother moved to Kerala via Assam and Ooty with her and her older brother, Lalith, when her parents separated. It was a a precarious, nomadic life, living with relatives, and describes taking shelter in her maternal grandfather’s cottage in Tamil Nadu, only to be thrown out because of the property laws of the state, which did not afford daughters inheritance rights. Her mother was a teacher and she demanded even her own children call her Mrs. Roy. She starts a school that grows into a renowned institution where she models her own brand of feminism, unflinchingly confronting matters of gender and sexuality. Mrs Roy challenges the inheritance laws in the Syrian Christian community, suing her brother to obtain an equal share of her father’s estate, and wins the case Mary Roy Etc vs State of Kerala and Others, heard by the Supreme Court of India in 1986. She is sharp, restless and charismatic, a visionary ruling with an iron fist. But in her rage against the patriarchy, she also lashes out at her children. She berates her childrean for the tiniest of foibles and humiliates them in public. She was fearless in her public life but made life miserable for her children, which was confusing and damaging for them. This is unflinching in its subtle but persuasive rant against perpetuating a society that leaves women as second class citizens.

Kokuho (2025)

This film is nominated in the category of Make Up for the 2026 Academy Awards, and it was short listed for Best International Movie. It is set in and around the world of Kabuki, the 400-year-old theatrical form that lies near the heart of Japanese culture. Spanning half a century and running close to three hours, this quiet epic is the top-grossing Japanese live action film of all time. When we first meet the hero, Kikuo, he's 14 and playing a female role in an excerpt from a famous Kabuki play. (Men play all the roles in Kabuki.) His performance is seen by a Kabuki star, Hanai who's impressed by his talent. When Kikuo's yakuza father is murdered by a rival gang, Hanai takes him in as a protégé, teaching him to become an onnagata — a male actor who plays female roles. There is one snag. Hanai already has a son of the same age, Shunsuke, who is slated to be his artistic heir, and, in the Kabuki world, artistic status passes from father to son. The story of what transpires between Kikuo and Shunsuke a compelling story about friendship, the weight of history, the quest for perfection and the torturous road to becoming a living national treasure — which is what the word "kokuho" means. Spanning their lives, it also is a portrait of post WWII 20th century Japan, where ideas about birth and cultural inheritance, which seem quite dated. Then in Kikuo's struggle to become Japan's greatest Kabuki actor, we feel the chilly isolation of devoting yourself to an art form so demanding that it leaves little room for ordinary human connectionanything else--his connection with Shunsuke is the closest thing he has to an ordinary relationship. This is lush and gorgeous, all the while having a creepy undercurrent. Don't miss it.

Cursed Daughters by Oyinkan Braithwaite

The author's first book, which was long listed for the Booker prize, was more violent and grizzly than this one, which overall is a good thing I think. That is a sibling tale--one sister kills her abusive boyfriend, the other one cleans up the mess. In this one but there is still a family mess to mop up. This time, the problem is spiritual rather than forensic: a matrilineal curse. For generations, the women of the Falodun family have been unlucky in matters of sustained love. They find love alright– but it curdles. Marriages disintegrate; husbands cheat, or die, or disappear. And so the women return home to Lagos, rejoin their spinster kin and teach their fatherless daughters to brace themselves for betrayal. We follow the intertwined fates of three curse-bearers. There is Monife, who dies by her own hand in the novel’s opening pages, but lingers in otherworldly ways; her cousin Ebun, who becomes a mother on the day Monife is buried; and Eniiyi, Ebun’s daughter, whose resemblance to Monife is so uncanny there is talk of reincarnation. Skipping back and forth in time, the novel zones in on each young woman as she grapples with the family jinx. It is a well told tale of what amounts to generational trauma.

Classroom 4 (2025)

This short documentary was short listed in that category for the 2026 Academy awards--it did not make the final cut, but it is open source and available to for viewing by all. The documentary takes place inside the Columbia River Correctional Institution (CRCI) in Portland, where incarcerated students and Lewis & Clark undergraduates meet weekly over the course of a semester to study the history of crime and punishment in the United States. The Inside-Out course—which is part of the nationwide Inside-Out Prison Exchange program—meets in Classroom 4 at the facility. There, students explore ideas of justice, mercy, and the evolution of the carceral state. What emerges is not only a study of history but a shared experience of humanity. The course is taught by Reiko Hillyer, professor of history and department chair. Hillyer began teaching Inside-Out courses in 2012, a year after completing training through the Philadelphia-based program. Since then, she has taught the CRCI class every other year, guiding mixed cohorts of “inside” (incarcerated) and “outside” (college) students through lively weekly discussions and shared assignments. Each class usually includes 30 students—15 from CRCI and 15 from the college—who meet behind prison walls to learn, debate, and reflect as equals. It is a very good watch.

Quilt By Night

Becky Halvorsen, family medicine doctor by day and quilter by night. I first came to know her because she issued an FPP design for the Rebel Loon at the height of the violence in Minneapolis, and being a member of the Minneapolis Modern Quilt Guild, one of our sew on Zoom sessions had one member finishing hers, one talk about the one she had made and put on a bag to take to QuiltCon and another member piecing one that day. She was a quilt hero to us. And she make the pattern available without charge. The same is true for her rainbow heart and same with this FPP for the classic VOTE logo. She also has a lot of fun whimsical patterns on her website and in her Etsy shop, including letters, which you can use to make a VACCINES MAKE ADULTS and other things that seem obvious but are now seen as political. Here is the thing. Basic decency is now seen as radical. Lying about absolutely everything is happening on our governmental web sites. It is incumbent on all of us to speak up. And some of what is coming out of the fiber art world is absolutely amazing, so check her out, download a free pattern (she has one with stars that I am eying a scrap friendly and not too hard as FPP goes, so right up my alley), buy a pattern (I am a true amateur when it comes to FPP so I am building a library of alphabets and hers is a great one), and support democracy.

The Voice of Hind Rajab (2025)

This is a docudrama that is nominated in the Best International Film category for the 2026 Academy Awards. It is a re-enactment of events that happened. On January 29th, 2024, the Israeli Army ordered the evacuation of the Tel Al-Hawa neighborhood in the Gaza Strip. On that day, six members of the Hamadeh family, along with their six-year-old niece, Hind Rajab, were trapped in their car after the Israeli Army opened fire on them, killing five occupants of the vehicle immediately. Miraculously, a fifteen-year-old girl named Layan was able to call the Palestinian Red Crescent Society and ask for help before she too succumbed to her wounds. That left six-year-old Hind alone in the car, surrounded by the corpses of her slain family members, possessing a cellphone with shoddy reception as her only hope. The conversations that members of the PRCS had with her while they are trying to coordinate an ambulance safe passage to come get her to safety use actual recordings of Hind and the movie quite dramatically takes the audience into the day to day stresses of being helpless at the end of a phone while people are in danger and at the mercy of what seems like a merciless war. This was very painful to watch.

Tie Dip Dye by Pepa Martin & Karen Davis

This is the year that I do a deep dive into dying. I haven't done this since I lived in Central California and was in a fiber guild with Jean Ray Laury. I did some dying and some silk screening and I really enjoyed it--as well as enjoying the creative expression it afforded. So I am taking all the books out of my local library that are available and learning what I can before I can take some classes. I started by going to the National Shibori Museum when I was in Kyoto and taking a class there. Then there are two things are happening to assist with expanging my coloring experience into the 21st century. My guild is doing an indigo dye vat in August, and the in person workshops that I take not at QuiltCon are at Minnesota Quilters and this year I am taking three classes where I do dying. This book has several techniques that I will be doing immersion in--ombre, shibori--specifically folding and tying or sewing to get resist dying features, ice dying and ombre dying. The book is a bit scant on exact details, but does have good pictures, if you are a visual learner, and it has a brief narrative about each technique. I think it would be hard to use this book alone to do it on your own, but it would be a good book to use in combination with a book that discusses more about the dyes themselves.

All The Empty Rooms (2025)

This short documentary was seven years in the making. Media correspondent Steve Hartman used to work on finding something positive to report after mass school shootings, basically the silver lining after children have been killed in their classrooms. You could see how that would wear on you over time. Much like all the “thoughts and prayers” rather than real outrage and an effort to make change. So along with long-time friend and photographer Lou Bopp they visit families across the US who have been affected by school shootings and document all of their ‘empty rooms.’ We’re so used to seeing the media side of stories that this is where it gets very real in a way that puts us into the long term effects of the loss, the hole that dead children leave behind. Directed by Joshua Seftel and distributed by Netflix, the emotionally poignant untold stories have been nominated for ‘Best Documentary Short’ at this year’s Academy Awards. We step into the families lives. From keeping the lights on to hearing their voice recordings through teddies and keeping their rooms exactly how they left them. Alongside this we see Lou talking through the process of photographing his daughter every day to see her progression. This freedom of growing up serves as a reminder for the importance of life.

The Henna Artist by Alka Joshi

I have a slow roll on this, but I am reading all the Reese Witherspoon book club picks and have overall found them to be good and a bit lighter than books that are longlisted for the Booker Prize. This is not my favorite of these--I found the writing to be just okay. This story is about Lakshmi, and takes place in 1955, the early years of Indian independence. Fifteen years before, she was married to a man by force who abused her and depended on her to support him. One day, she had the courage to flee her home and her village. Even though it means she had to leave her saas (mother-in-law) behind. She was close to her saas and she learned a lot of herbal medicine remedies. It turns out she has quite a talent for it, and after a rough journey Lakshmi ends up in Jaipur where she settles and establishes a life for herself as henna artist with an herbal medicine practice on the side. Lakshmi has worked hard, starting with nothing and slowly making a name for herself as a henna artist. Her business is taking off, new plans are about to come to fruition, and everything she’s ever wanted is within reach. Then the abusive husband she fled turns up on her doorstep with a sister she never knew about. With her parents dead and an outcast in her village, Radha has no one else to turn to except her sister. Introducing Radha, a 13 year old girl who has only ever known village life to wealthy castes of Jaipur society proves to be increasingly more challenging and Lakshmi can feel her dreams slipping through her fingers. She does manage to find her way, not without help and not without difficulty. The book is strongest when it is describing the sights and sounds of post-colonial India.