Beandrea JULY

Author Q& A with Alison Mariella Désir on her memoir "Running While Black"

A look back at “Pariah,” the coming-of-age drama from the writer-director Dee Rees on its 10th Anniversary.

Season 1: Co-created, Co-hosted, Produced, Edited and Mixed by Beandrea July

CherryPicks presents CherryPop: a podcast about women and sex onscreen. Tune in each week for our deep dives into some of the most compelling portrayals of female pleasure in film and television. Hosts Beandrea July and Meg McCarthy take listeners on a journey to celebrate feminine pleasure across a diverse and wide-ran

A Black feminist discussion of the FX miniseries MRS. AMERICA starring Cate Blanchett, Rose Byrne, Uzo Aduba, Niecy Nash, Margo Martindale, Sarah Paulson.

Featuring The Greenidge Sisters: Kaitlyn, Kerri and Kirsten.

Produced, Edited, Mixed by Beandrea July

Fiction podcast created, written and directed by Beandrea July
Recent college grad Selah Copeland (Jerrika Hinton) is being groomed to takeover her mother's accounting business, but after a life-changing weekend away at a yoga retreat, she's considering other options. Centered is an audio drama about finding yourself on and off the mat.

Back in 2018, Green Book premiered to acclaim at the Toronto International Film Festival, winning the People's Choice award and the admiration of seasoned white critics covering the festival. Once a wider cross-section of critics and moviegoers got to see it, of course, the response was considerably more divided.

Rather than ignore such characters as the film industry has often done in the past, mainstream and indie directors alike explored their lives, and sometimes the results were astonishing.

“I love the fact that this is a Black-ass show,” said one woman on the call, “so we can have an angry person and a happy person, a sad person, a ratchet person. Give me everything—the whole window of emotions.”
I was sitting in on a regular Zoom meetup with 30 young Black professionals discussing the recent season finale of the HBO hit Insecure...

For KPCC's The Frame: In the new documentary, "Toni Morrison: The Pieces I Am," we learn about the woman behind the work to see how she got to this distinguished place in American culture. Directed by photographer and filmmaker Timothy Greenfield-Sanders, the movie premiered at the Sundance Film Festival last January. Film critic Beandrea July reviewed it for Out magazine at the time. Now that it’s in theaters, she takes another look at the film with the help of a leading expert on Morrison’s work.

In 2018, Democrat Liz Watson took a shot at flipping her red Indiana district blue. And filmmakers Wendy Sachs and Hannah Rosenzweig followed her every move. In their newly released Showtime documentary, Surge, viewers see Watson sign donor thank-you letters “Love, Liz,” and listen to her optimistic elementary-school-age daughter, Lila, say, “Man we could really win this.”

From their townhome in L.A.’s San Fernando Valley, professional dancers Sheopatra and YoE Apolinario nestle closely on the couch for our virtual interview. It’s late July, and these partners in movement—and life—exude affection, even over Zoom. It’s like entering into a warm hug.
YoE's face brightens when asked to describe her fiancée's dance style: “I feel like the ancestors come down through her body and they are guiding her movements,” she says. “It feels like a sermon.”

While the fight for racial justice isn’t new for many, some are searching for ways to become better allies and to understand systemic oppression for the first time. And they’re turning to movies to help educate themselves.
Now, 2011’s “The Help” has become the most-watched film on Netflix. But many Black people and critics say the film is not the movie you should be watching to better understand race relations.

The vast majority of Hollywood films over the past hundred years were made by, about and for white people. The industry’s first blockbuster — 1915’s The Birth of a Nation by D.W. Griffith — was a Ku Klux Klan propaganda film featuring white actors in blackface.

When “Unchained Melody,” also known as the music from the pottery wheel scene in “Ghost,” shows up in a movie, it’s clearly meant to evoke romance.

In the teen high school comedy “Booksmart,” a bubblegum-pop cover plays when Molly takes her bestie, Amy, to the airport to leave for a gap year. Having a crush is still part of the movie’s angsty teen equation, but the song choice signals something new: that deep friendship isn’t a fallback...