Rise: A Conversation With Rosie Perez. The actress, author, dancer, choreographer and former View television host has been a longtime social activist as well. Most prominently when the Latina performer was arrested for protesting the US Navy bombing range at Vieques in Puerto Rico. And Perez is currently starring in a new small screen dramatic series, Rise - in which she struggles as a high school drama teacher to include the arts as a necessary and vital curriculum component. We talk protests, the inspiration of the arts in her own life, accents, and 'social activism no matter what.'

LISTEN TO THE SHOW HERE

** "To say there's one political ideal in Antifa that they're all trying to achieve, I don't think that there is one. - I think for the most part that anti-fascists are also anti-capitalist, and are for some kind of revolutionary transformation of society."

Filmmaker Brandon Jourdan Talks Antifa. The Antifa activist as well is on the line to the show from Amsterdam to delve into concepts - and misconceptions surrounding the movement. And according to Jourdan, somewhat of a spontaneous social protest flash mob that may not even exist at all as an organization. Antifa is a documentary project of Global Uprisings and Interference Archive.

                                 SALOME AND NIETZSCHE

** "When you get to know the work of Rilke, Nietzsche and Freud, she was so present in her time, and she was such a star in her time - so why has she been nearly forgotten?"

Lou-Andreas Salome: The Audacity To Be Free. Director Cordula Kablitz-Post Phones In. Discussing her dramatic feature highlighting the extraordinary life and work - and buried history of this trailblazer author, feminist and first female psychoanalyst in her time. And what all that has to do with Freud, Rilke, Nazis, and postcards. And was her spurned lover Nietzsche , as reported in the film, not really Hitler's inspiration at all, but made into one by his sister who altered his writing to appeal to the Nazis?

** Poetry Corner: Pass The Questions. A political Passover poem written and read by Alexis Krasilovsky, at our Arts Express West Coast Desk.

The Death Of Stalin Review

The concurrent curious situation witnessing the decline in both impact and credibility of the media and the rise of fake news, may be leading the ongoing quest for disinformation domination over public opinion, in a quest for alternative vehicles. And what better appendage than cinema, whose potentially potent powers of persuasion function quite independently of any basic notions of truth in advertising.

And if fraudulent fare like The Young Karl Marx and The Death of Stalin seem to be the current trendy fictitious history du jour, expect more. In other words, as the ongoing financial crisis fuels the fury of an economic downwardly mobile population, particularly younger generations with no future prospects, what more effective establishment method of containment, than to convince the restless masses that no hope lies anywhere else - especially any direction offering a glimpse of an alternative future like socialism.

And while The Young Karl Marx projects the hopelessness, indeed scorn, of any earnest but ultimately pathetic proposal crafted by Marx, The Death Of Stalin simply mocks with excessive buffoonery at play around the clock, and pretty much nothing else transpiring under Soviet communism. Though one oddly inserted scene of mass adulation expressed for Stalin and their country contradicting everything else preceding.

While in progress off screen, a peculiar reality featuring rather the ensuing death of capitalism. And simultaneously at work is this new fangled cinema's manipulative concoction of a slew of cynical fare, to convince everyone who will listen that rage, resentment and mass uprising are futile alternatives. In other words, a far more intriguing power struggle outside movie theaters, pitting corporate interests against popular discontent.

Along with the most pressing 'follow the money' inquiries that should be posed by any responsible film critic. Namely, who funded your movie.

Praire Miller

Arts Express: Dare To Be Different Radio