Welcome to Decorah Stories—Letter from the Editor

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Please stop watching “The Help”: 5 white savior movies to skip–and what to watch instead

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A white savior movie is a film that portrays white self-sacrifice as necessary to “help” or “fix” a black person’s situation. In a white savior film, black characters are represented as victims who are desperately in need of the help of white people in order to thrive in society. As Chris Rock noted in the movie Top Five: “In any civil rights movie, there’s two heroes. There’s the black hero, and the white person who’s ‘equally’ as important.”

Selected here are five white savior movies you should skip–and what to watch instead.

Black Filmmakers Matter: 15 essential black filmmakers

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During the past and continuing to the present, major black voices have found artistic expression in filmmaking, creating some of cinema’s most memorable moments. From the liberating catharsis of the blaxploitation genre to the genre-defying films of Spike Lee, black filmmakers have made an indelible imprint on the history of film. And new filmmakers like Jordan Peele, Barry Jenkins, and Ryan Coogler have ushered in new and challenging voices to contemporary cinema. Collected here are 15 of history’s most influential and successful black filmmakers.

Black Filmmakers Matter: 20 great films by black American directors

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A crucial step in confronting systematic injustice is to learn the stories of the oppressed. Black cinema–both past and present–has a wealth of brilliant and challenging movies. From the blistering and genre-defying films of Spike Lee to the intimate and elegiac films of Barry Jenkins, here are 20 essential films from black filmmakers and where to watch them.

“BlacKkKlansman” is Spike Lee’s brilliant and subversively funny journey into White America

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Bottom Line: BlacKkKlansman is an electric, jarring, disturbing, and subversively funny film from one of contemporary cinema’s most vital and necessary filmmakers.
When it premiered in late-summer 2018, filmmaker Spike Lee’s “BlacKkKlansman” put Lee back on the map, garnering him some of the best reviews of his career and proving to be his most commercially successful film since the heist thriller “Inside Man” from 2007. Set in the early ‘70s, the film tells the true story of a black detective who successfully infiltrates a Colorado chapter of the KKK.

10 Contemporary British Novelists I Can’t Live Without

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Contemporary British literature offers readers some of the most vitally original voices working today. From established prose stylists Julian Barnes and Ian McEwan to the evocative historical novels of Hilary Mantel and Pat Barker, each of the ten British authors selected for this list has maintained a consistent output of inventive and emotionally-compelling work.

R.I.P. Fred Willard, a delightful oaf

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The indelible comic actor Fred Willard passed away May 15 at the age of 86. Best remembered for his roles as delightful oafs in the Christopher Guest improv ensembles Best in Show, Waiting for Guffman, and A Mighty Wind–Willard’s career spanned over fifty years, including a late-career flowering on TV, earning four Emmy nominations for his work on Everybody Loves Raymond and Modern Family.