On the Record

While I absolutely believe all of his accusers of Russell Simmons the documentary was just not that good. I'm not sure what it was but it didn't keep me interested I actually fell asleep on it. Maybe a different director would have done the stories more justice.

Movie night with Iris.

#MeToo meets 90s Hip-Hop. This is less about the crime, but courageous Drew Dixon's (a former A&R executive with Def Jam Records) difficult decision whether to go "on the record" about being sexually assaulted by Russell Simmons.

The intersectional issues at play were the most interesting to me. The specific challenges black women face when they come forward against a black man, the fears that their allegations will play into white America's history of viewing black men as violent.

There is a clunky section focusing on the misogyny in hip-hop, and wider rock music. It's simplistic, adds little and feels tacked on.

Parts of this film were very interesting and thought provoking and yes, brutal. Other parts were eye-rollingly cheesy, and trying way to hard to wring emotion out of very un-special moments... Not entertaining, not very informative (other than a few great points). I think maybe though this will hit women harder- not because men don't care but because as much as we may want to understand and be supportive, it's not something we will directly feel in quite the same way... So as much as I wanted to like the film, it was overall pretty boring and really, I feel like this could've been an amazing 15 min doc. At 1 hr 35 min it just becomes way too much of a fluff piece about strong women, which isn't in itself a bad thing, it just doesn't make for a captivating full length documentary.

Not only Kirby Dick and Amy Ziering's 'On the Record' is an absorbing, incredibly powerful documentary of one brave woman's fight to bring her abuser to justice, it also poses larger questions about the treatment of black women by the #MeToo movement, and exposes the pretty well-known culture of the music industry and its long history of misogyny - specifically the misogyny of hip-hop.

... on the quality of this film - it's unarguably important if it does nothing other than provide women the confidence to stand up and fight abuse and their abusers - if it does more all the better, if it results in prosecutions even better still.