Many gay Republicans recoiled when Donald Trump brought on Indiana Governor Mike Pence as his vice-presidential running mate. Pence’s long track record of advocating for religious businesses to have the liberty to discriminate against customers, his crusade against same-sex marriage and his staunch anti-abortion politics have made him a polarizing figure…
A behind-the-scenes look at Amendment 70.
Running or defeating a contested ballot proposal in Colorado can cost millions, and somebody needs to front the money. Sometimes the big funders are gargantuan lobbying groups from big tobacco, the oil and gas industry or mega-unions. Other times the donors are wealthy individuals taking their pet issues for a…
Filmmakers remix classic movies for countless reasons: nostalgia, mining old footage for new meaning, creating jokes or social commentary. Then there’s Gregg Biermann, who processes Hollywood classics and sometimes his own footage through mathematical formulas designed to create digital optical patterns that are not always beautiful, psychologically innovative or rich in…
Punk is so much more than loud music with rebellious lyrics screamed over electric guitars wailing three chords and 16th notes. It’s more than leather jackets, Mohawks and patches. It’s even more than radical politics that veer far right or far left. It’s rough around the edges, cheap to make and…
The Colorado chapter of the American Indian Movement helped raise Moho’ma’na, a Hopi and Dineh activist now in her late twenties. Growing up, she marched to abolish Columbus Day. She witnessed police arrest her elders as year after year they tried to shut down the annual Knights of Columbus parade that they…
At September 29’s Punx in Solidarity!: From Denver to Standing Rock, the music will be fierce. The art will be bold. The food will be delicious. And the money raised will fund Native resistance. As the DIY artists, chefs and musicians organizing the event tell it, they’re far less important than the…
There’s an unforgettable scene in Like Water for Chocolate. A woman bakes a cake for the wedding of the man she loves but is not marrying. She weeps into the batter. When the wedding guests eat her cake, they vomit wildly: Her grief poisoned her cooking. Janelle VanderKelen draws on this…
What would happen if in November Colorado voters passed Amendment 70, opting to raise the minimum wage from $8.31 to $12 an hour by 2020? The state’s economy would grow. That’s according to the new study “The Impact of a $12.00 Minimum Wage on Women in Colorado,” from the University…
Some filmmakers tell great stories. Jason Halprin chooses not to. In films he’ll show Saturday night at Cinema Contra, he refuses to dictate to audiences how or what they should feel or think. The 38-year-old experimental filmmaker grew up in Pueblo. In high school, he seeped himself in the writings…
Sage burned thick in the air. Drums pounded. Hundreds marched, danced and prayed under the gold dome of the State Capitol. The dispute over a North Dakota oil pipeline leaked into Denver Thursday night, as Native American children and elders led activists from all over the state who had converged…
White Cop Kills Black Man. This headline is disturbing, but hardly surprising anymore. Sides have long been drawn on the issue of use of force by law enforcement. Black Lives Matter activists blast police for racism and murdering people of color without consequence. Blue Lives Matter cops scold activists for…
Andrea Davis, a weather-worn forty-year-old ex-library clerk turned farmer, has rescued abused and doomed-to-die animals for most of her life. Davis’s goals for her Broken Shovels Farm in Henderson are to create an oasis of health in a food desert that is more than two miles from the nearest grocery…
“The Denver Police Department, under Chief Robert White, has become a model for criminal-justice reform across America,” said Mayor Michael Hancock during Monday’s State of the City address at Denver International Airport. That came as news to criminal-justice reformers and activists who have long criticized the department for targeting communities…
The shadow of recent police shootings of black men in Louisiana and Minnesota loomed over Mayor Michael Hancock’s State of the City address this morning at Denver International Airport. And it was not just the silent protesters holding Black Lives Matter signs on the sidelines that raised the call for criminal-justice…
Sundance is over and Oscar season — but the show will go on at local movie theaters. In March, screens will light up with two Alfred Hitchcock classics, several film festivals and a survey of Italian neorealism. Audiences will also be able to spend an entire weekend with one of the…
If you’re looking for the truth, Colorado’s a great place to be. Our state’s documentary directors have made movies that brought home Oscars, became Sundance selections and won prestigious festival awards, and movie programmers work tirelessly to bring the best of contemporary and historical nonfiction films to local audiences. Here…
Whether you’re planning to find warmth in February through God’s light, red-hot porn, global-warming anxiety or athletic burn, thaw out at one of the Denver area’s movie theaters. This month programmers will be reflecting on everything from Judaism to wolf extinction to ultra-endurance racing on local screens. So put on…
Back In the mid-’90s, Bill Teck got fed up with all the talk about Generation X. Between Douglas Coupland’s book Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture and Richard Linklater’s film Slacker, pop culture was failing to represent Teck’s experience as a Latino living in Miami, surrounded by people from…
Sancocho is a stew that originated in the Dominican Republic. Its ingredients come from Europe, the Caribbean, Africa and Asia, and are a reflection of the many cultures that make up Dominican identity. The stew offers a taste of how complex the Latino experience can be in this country, and…
Spanish has birthed one unique letter: ñ, pronounced “en-yay.” The squiggly line above the n is called a tilde. Twelfth-century Spanish scribes used the tilde to shorthand the pairing of the same letter in a word: nn, aa, etc. Of all the Spanish letters that once carried a tilde, ñ…
No, Colorado is not Los Angeles or New York. But the homegrown films this state has to offer defy the expectations of moviegoers whose tastes are limited to Hollywood and Indiewood offerings. We have bold, original voices, untamed by industry standards. A host of recent documentaries have made national waves,…
