Month: February 2018

Drafting a menstrual hygiene program to be taught in schools in India’s western Maharashtra state posed a challenge: How to train teachers to become comfortable talking about a subject that is never openly spoken about, even inside homes, and has long been surrounded by taboos.

“It is a very inhibiting environment,” said Bharathy Tahiliani in Mumbai, who helped design the teaching modules for the program spearheaded by United Nations Children’s Agency. “It puts a lot of fears in the hearts and minds of girls.”

Now a Bollywood film, Padman, dubbed the world’s first feature film to address the subject of menstruation, could make it easier to confront the stigma that surrounds the hushed topic. Winning accolades and a huge audience since it opened this month, the movie has helped catapult words such as sanitary napkins and periods into newspaper articles, television debates and social media.

Starring a top hero, Akshay Kumar, the film is based on the true-life story of a social entrepreneur in South India who set out on a mission to make low-cost sanitary napkins after he discovers his wife uses rags. 

In one scene, Padman shows him cycling around a village wearing a sanitary napkin he has made and using animal blood to test if it leaked. It also depicts the horror in the small town as he openly talks about menstruation. 

Dozens of Bollywood actors and actresses have joined in to spread the message: In a country where shopkeepers discreetly pack sanitary napkins in black plastic bags under the counter so that they are not visible, they have tweeted photos of themselves holding up sanitary pads.

“It is fantastic,” the overjoyed film director, R. Balki, told VOA after witnessing the reaction of some viewers. “There were men with their wives and they were coming out of the theater and talking about just not the film, they were talking about a pad as if it is an everyday conversation. Just to make that come out in the open is a big, big deal.”

Social activists say the buzz generated by the movie could help efforts to tackle the issue of menstrual hygiene and sanitation in villages, slums and other low-income communities.

Targeting myths, taboos

In India, as in several countries, the myths and taboos about menstruation are many: Women cannot visit temples, take part in religious ceremonies or prepare food. The greater challenge is that an estimated 20 percent of adolescent girls drop out of school after puberty, and unhygienic practices lead to infections.

Pointing out that this reinforces gender inequalities, Tahiliani said education is the key to correcting misconceptions. But she said that for a very long time, “who owns the subject” was itself a challenge, with few willing to wade into a hyper-sensitive topic. That has been slowly changing in recent years, and several states like Maharashtra are implementing menstrual hygiene programs in schools and communities, often in partnership with voluntary groups.

One of them, the Center for Advocacy and Research, has been helping set up adolescent forums in slums and low-income areas in cities like Delhi and Kolkata to create awareness.

A member of a forum in the eastern city of Kolkata, 20-year-old Rehana Khatun said she was hesitant to attend programs on menstrual awareness when she was young. “People used to discourage us,” she said. “Why do you go there? They teach you dirty things.” Now, she is on the frontlines of those going around schools and communities to talk about it. “Young girls should not get scared the way I did, I thought I had some illness,” she recalled about the onset of puberty.

Another volunteer, Mohini Khatun, hopes the conversation that Padman has generated will bring the subject out of the closet, especially within families.

“Our adolescent group will go and watch it,” she said. “It is essential that our mothers and fathers should also go.”

Into rural India and beyond

However, while the movie is helping generate discussions in cities and towns, it remains to be seen whether it will do the same in rural India.

The makers of Padman say they are trying to take the film to tens of thousands of villages across the country. “The problem is there are lots of places where there are no theaters. We are trying to tie up with various foundations to screen this film in lots of villages free of cost,” said director Balki.

And although Bollywood movies are a rage in several Asian countries, it is uncertain how this film will fare outside India, where similar sensitivities exist. The challenge will not be easy. Already Pakistan’s censor board has banned the film, saying that the movie is about a taboo subject and releasing it would go against culture and tradition.
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The long Olympic drought is over for the United States in cross-country skiing.

Jessica Diggins and Kikkan Randall became the first Americans to win an Olympic gold medal in the sport on Wednesday by shocking powerhouses Norway and the Sweden in the women’s team sprint at the Pyeongchang Games.

 

Diggins passed Norway’s Marit Bjoergen, the most decorated Winter Olympian of all time, on the final lap and out-sprinted Sweden’s Stina Nilsson to the finish. Diggins screamed as she crossed the finish line, setting off a huge celebration for the red, white and blue.

 

As Diggins collapsed to the ground, Randall jumped on her and American teammates cheered from behind the wall guarding the entrance to the course. Soon they all joined together in one huge celebration.

 

To put the victory in perspective, the United States had never won a medal of any kind in women’s cross-country skiing prior to the race.

 

The only American to previously win an Olympic medal in the sport was Bill Koch, who took silver in the 30-kilometer race in the 1976 Winter Games in Innsbruck.

 

The Americans posted the fastest time in the semifinals to start on the front row in the final. Diggins passed the Swedes and the Norwegians on the final lap to secure the elusive win. Sweden took silver and Norway finished with a bronze, which allowed Bjoergen to secure her record 14th medal in the Winter Games. That broke her tie with Norwegian biathlete Ole Einar Bjourndalen for most medals in the Winter Olympics.

 
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The Czech Republic won a stunning 3-2 shootout victory over the United States in the men’s hockey quarterfinals match-up.

Wednesday at the 2018 PyeongChang Winter Olympics in South Korea. 

Petr Kouka scored the game-winning goal for the Czech Republic, while goalie Pavel Francouz stopped a total of 18 shots, including five in the shootout. The Czech Republic will now move on to face the Russian squad, who advanced after posting a 6-1 quarterfinal rout of Norway. 

In women’s figure skating, 15-year-old Russian Alina Zagitova scored a world-record 82.92 points in her short program, besting the 81.61 mark set just minutes earlier by 18-year-old teammate Evegenia Medvedeva. The performances put the Russians in commanding position to win the first gold medal for a delegation that is competing under the neutral Olympic Athletes from Russia banner after the national team was banned over a major doping scandal.

The U.S. trio of Mirai Nagasu, Karen Chen and Bradie Tennell struggled with early mistakes in each of their programs. Nagasu was ninth with Chen and Tennell right behind her.

Meanwhile, Italy’s Sofia Goggia won the gold medal in the ladies’s downhill ski event, beating silver medalist Ragnhild Mowinkel of Norway by just nine hundredths of a seconds. American Lindsey Vonn, in the final Olympics of her career, won the bronze medal to become the oldest female medalist in Winter Olympics history at the age of 33. 

Canada’s Brady Leman took home the gold medal in the men’s ski cross event, with Switzerland’s Marc Bishofberger taking the silver medal and Russia’s Sergey Ridzik winning bronze. 

And the United States won its first ever Olympic gold medal in women’s cross-country skiing, upsetting Sweden by .19 seconds. Norway finished in nearly three seconds later to win the bronze.
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A Black Panther themed pop-up bar in Washington, D.C., offers fans an interactive entrance into the make-believe land of Wakanda. The four-day event provided more than just a space for Marvel fans, but also a chance to pay homage to the movie that they say breaks the mold on stories about the black experience. Jesusemen Oni has more.
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The late Ursula K. Le Guin was among the recipients of literary honors presented Tuesday night by PEN America.

The science fiction/fantasy author’s “No Time to Spare” won a $10,000 prize for best essay writing. Le Guin died last month at age 88 and her award was announced during a New York ceremony hosted by PEN, the literary and human rights organization. 

Poet Layli Long Soldier’s debut collection “Whereas” won a $75,000 award for the year’s best book. Jenny Zhang’s story collection “Sour Heart” received a $25,000 prize for best debut fiction and Alexis Okeowo’s “A Moonless, Starless Sky: Ordinary Women and Men Fighting Extremism in Africa” won a $5,000 award given to outstanding works by “authors of color.”

“This year’s awardees represent the near and far corners of the literary landscape, including writers who have shattered barriers of race, class, ethnicity, geography, gender and sexual orientation to bring stories to new audiences, unlock empathy and take places of distinction within our collective canon,” PEN America Executive Director Suzanne Nossel said in a statement. “In times of challenge great literature offers a desperately needed window onto other possibilities.”

Lifetime achievement awards had been previously announced and were given to Edmund White, who won the PEN/Saul Bellow Award for American fiction, and Edna O’Brien, winner of the PEN/Nabokov Award for international literature.
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George Clooney, Oprah Winfrey, Steven Spielberg and Jeffrey Katzenberg said Tuesday that they would each donate $500,000 to the “March for Our Lives” rally in Washington in support of gun control following last week’s shooting at a Florida high school that left 17 dead.

Clooney and his wife, human rights lawyer Amal Clooney, were the first to make the financial pledge and also said they would march alongside the students behind the rally on March 24.

Students from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida, where a 19-year-old former student is accused of going on a rampage with a semiautomatic AR-15-style assault rifle on February 14, are assisting in planning the march.

“Our family will be there on March 24 to stand side by side with this incredible generation of young people from all over the country, and in the name of our children Ella and Alexander, we’re donating $500,000 to help pay for this groundbreaking event. Our children’s lives depend on it,” Clooney said in a statement.

Later on Tuesday, Spielberg, with wife Kate Capshaw, and Winfrey each said that they would match the Clooneys’ donation.

“George and Amal, I couldn’t agree with you more. I am joining forces with you and will match your $500,000 donation to ‘March for Our Lives.’ These inspiring young people remind me of the Freedom Riders of the ’60s who also said we’ve had ENOUGH and our voices will be heard,” Winfrey tweeted.

Spielberg and Capshaw, in an emailed statement, said, “The young students in Florida and now across the country are already demonstrating their leadership with a confidence and maturity that belies their ages.”

It was not immediately clear whether they and Winfrey would attend the march. But Katzenberg, a film producer, and his wife, Marilyn, also said they would match the $500,000 donation and march in Washington.

The March for Our Lives event is one of several rallies being organized by students across the country in support of stronger gun laws, challenging politicians who they say have failed to protect them. Busloads of Florida students headed to the state capital, Tallahassee, on Tuesday to call for a ban on assault rifles.

Other celebrities have voiced their support for the students’ efforts on social media, including Justin Bieber, Lady Gaga and Cher.

Gun ownership is protected by the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution and remains one of the nation’s more divisive issues.
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Fourteen-times major winner Tiger Woods will serve as one of the vice captains on the U.S. Ryder Cup squad that will try to snap a 25-year drought on European soil later this year, Jim Furyk said on Tuesday.

Furyk, who will serve as captain when holders United States battle Europe in September at the Golf National on the outskirts of Paris, also announced 12-times PGA Tour winner Steve Stricker as a vice captain.

“To win in Paris will be a great challenge, and to have Steve and Tiger share in the journey is important for me and for American golf,” said Furyk, who made the announcement from the PGA of America Headquarters in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida.

Served as vice captain in 2016

“The deep appreciation they both have for competition, the concept of team, and the Ryder Cup is infectious. Their knowledge and experience will be an invaluable resource in our effort to retain the Ryder Cup.”

Woods, who this week will make his third start of the PGA Tour season after a year-long absence during which he had back surgery, first served as a vice captain at Hazeltine in 2016.

The 42-year-old Woods is a veteran of seven Ryder Cups as a player, most recently in 2012. He said he was thankful to be selected as a vice captain but is still keen to earn a spot on the team as a player.

“My goal is to make the team, but whatever happens over the course of this season, I will continue to do whatever I can to help us keep the Cup,” Woods said in a video played at the news conference. “I’m excited about the challenge.”

Furyk said Woods possesses an ability to effectively pair players together in foursomes and fourballs while also inspiring a young team room filled with players who took up the game in the hope of emulating Woods.

Woods may have plenty of ground to make up if he hopes to be a playing vice captain, but Furyk did not rule out the greatest golfer of his generation filling a dual role.

“I want to do what’s best for Tiger and I want to do what’s best for the team and that would be a bridge we cross when we got there,” said Furyk. “If he could be valuable as a player, I mean, I’m sure we would want him playing on this team. But there’s so much time to go.”

Third time for Stricker

This year’s Ryder Cup, to be played from Sept. 28-30, will mark Stricker’s third stint as a vice captain, having served at Gleneagles in 2014 and in the 2016 U.S. victory at Hazeltine.

Furyk previously appointed former Ryder Cup captain Davis Love III as a vice captain and will announce additional vice captains at a later date.

The United States won the biennial matchplay event at home in 2016, marking their first triumph since 2008, but they have not celebrated on European soil since a 15-13 victory at The Belfry in England in 1993. 
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An award-winning British film about witch-hunts in Zambia could play an important role in curbing violence against women if translated into local languages and distributed widely, according to human rights campaigners.

The film “I Am Not A Witch” – which tells the story of an eight-year-old Zambian girl accused of being a witch – was named the most outstanding debut film on Sunday at Britain’s top film awards, the BAFTAs.

Welsh-Zambian director Rungano Nyoni spent a month in a so-called “witch camp” in Ghana to research the low budget film about a girl banished from her village to stay with other women also branded as witches.

Campaigners said films about often overlooked abuse of women – such as female genital mutilation and child marriage – helped raise awareness about the reality of these practices and could help bust myths and false narratives spanning decades.

“Films on under reported or little known gender abuses are very important as they can bring these often hidden issues to the public’s attention and force them into the light,” said Shelby Quast, director of the charity Equality Now.

“Bringing these stories to light can help survivors, civil society and communities to hold their government and duty bearers to account.”

Millions of women and girls in countries ranging from India and Pakistan to Tanzania, Kenya and Nigeria are still branded witches – often by their relatives or neighbours – in a bid to usurp their land or inheritance, say campaigners.

In many cases, victims are elderly widowed women who are humiliated, beaten, stripped and ostracized from their communities. Sometimes they are lynched.

Children are also targeted with their parents and communities misled into battering, maiming, drowning, burning and abandoning them.

“In the African context, witch branding usually leads to alienation of women from the community and this denies her rights to own land or even inherit it and reduces her ability to fend for herself,” said ActionAid Kenya’s Philip Kilonzo.

“It is increasingly becoming a practice in some communities to lynch witches which leads to further violation of their rights by denying them the right to life.”

Activists said it was key that films addressing these issues were seen where it mattered most.

“The use of films can be limiting in challenging such forms of violence against women as films speak to the privileged in the society, yet issues such as witch branding happen in the very remote rural areas and informal settlements in urban areas,” said Makena Mwobobia, ActionAid Kenya’s Head of Policy.

“However, if translated into the local languages, the same films can be used to speak to the emotions and the core of the community and hence touch on their individual character for behavioral change.”
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It was a role Robin Williams wanted to play in honor of his friend “Superman” actor Christopher Reeve – the true story of a quadriplegic who despite his disability makes his name as a talented cartoonist.

But while Williams, who committed suicide in 2014, never got the chance to play the part, his interest in cartoonist John Callahan helped bring the story to the screen, in a biopic competing for the top prize at the Berlin festival.

“Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far on Foot,” based on Callahan’s 1989 memoir, shows the young man partying while in thrall to alcoholism before a car accident on a drunken night out leaves him quadriplegic at age 21.

It follows his career as the creator of biting cartoons that often addressed the darker side of human nature, while battling alcoholism.

Director Gus Van Sant said Williams had asked him to work on adapting the memoir into a screenplay.

“He liked John Callahan’s work – he saw it in his local newspaper in San Francisco – and Christopher Reeve was a friend of his who had had an accident and he very much wanted to play a quadriplegic, partly in honor of his friend, who was a quadriplegic,” Van Sant said.

The film shows Callahan at Alcoholics Anonymous, revealing how being abandoned by his mother as a child drove him to drink.

Joaquin Phoenix, who plays Callahan – who died in 2010 – said the biggest challenge of the cartoonist’s life was not his paralysis. “I think drinking was his disability really,” he told

reporters in Berlin.

“Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far on Foot” is one of 19 films competing for the Berlin International Film Festival’s Golden Bear, to be awarded on February 24.

 
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New York City is still waiting to see who will become its first ever “night mayor.”

The nightlife ambassador position was announced last fall by Democratic Mayor Bill de Blasio. He says the position would serve as a point of contact between city agencies and the city nightlife industry. The New York Post reports Democratic City Councilman Rafael Espinal, who sponsored legislation creating the position, says he hasn’t heard any word about a confirmed appointee.

Espinal says the city is vetting a candidate and the post will be filled in the next few weeks. A spokeswoman for the mayor’s office declined to provide a timeframe for the announcement.

 

The Office of Nightlife and 12-member Nightlife Advisory Board were established last year.

 
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Canadian figure skaters Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir cemented their place in Winter Olympic history with a gold medal winning performance Tuesday in South Korea.

Virtue and Moir thrilled the audience with a flawless routine set to the soundtrack of the movie musical Moulin Rouge in the free dance part of the competition, and finished with a combined total score of 206.07 added from the short program and free skate.  They outpointed Gabriella Papadakis and Guillaume Cizeron, who had just set the world record moments earlier with a combined score of 205.28.  American brother-and-sister team Maia and Alex Shibutani finished third to take home the bronze medal.

The Canadians are going home with two gold medals from the Pyeongchang Games, including the one they won from last week’s team skate event, bringing their total career Olympic medals to five, the most by any figure skating pair, including a gold medal at the 2010 Vancouver Games in their home country.  

Meanwhile, it was another Canada-France-U.S. finish in the women’s freestyle half-pipe skiing, with Canadian Cassie Sharp taking gold, followed by France’s Marie Martinod and Brita Sigourney of the United States.

*Click here for latest medal count

In speed skating, host South Korea took home the gold medal in the women’s 3,000-kilometer relay, with Italy winning the silver and the Netherlands earning the bronze.  

Away from the ice rinks and ski slopes, the Pyeongchang Games are dealing with a third doping case, with Slovenian ice hockey player Ziga Jeglic ordered to leave the Olympic Village within 24 hours, after testing positive for fenoterol, a drug that is designed to open the airways to the lungs. Jeglic says the drug was in an inhaler used to treat an asthma condition under doctor’s orders.  

Jeglic’s dismissal from the Pyeongchang Games comes on the heels of Japanese short-track speedskater Kei Saito failing a pre-competition test, and Russian curler Alexander Krushelnitsky testing positive for a banned substance after winning a bronze medal in his sport.  

 
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Black Panther is a certified Hollywood blockbuster, raking in more than $200 million dollars in North America during its opening weekend, setting several records. As VOA’s Kane Farabaugh reports, the film’s success comes as no surprise to the fans that packed theaters on the south side of Chicago to celebrate a film that marks a welcome departure from the Hollywood norm.
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For a few hours every year, residents and visitors of this pretty Greek seaside town have a license to lose their civility. 

They have what’s known as a “flour war”  — participants pelt each other with bags of dyed flour along the coastal road lining Galaxidi’s old harbor. 

It’s an explosion of color that takes place every Clean Monday, an Orthodox Christian holiday marking the start of Lent and the end of the carnival season which holds onto many of the country’s pre-Christian traditions. 

Some 200 kilometers (120 miles) west of Athens, Galaxidi only has about 1,700 inhabitants but it was once an important trading port. Its influence declined with the advent of steam power in the 19th century. 

Some of the town’s former grandeur remains, including many of its traditional stone houses. 

The town only acquired a proper road link to the rest of central Greece in the 1960s, leaving much of Galaxidi with the appearance of a Greek island.
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A lavish, headline-grabbing premiere. Lightning word-of-mouth stoked by glowing reviews. Packed movie theaters with sold-out shows, long lines and fans decked out as characters from the film.

The phenomenon of “Black Panther” had the look and feel of a classic, bona fide blockbuster in route to its record-setting $201.8 million debut over the weekend, or an estimated $235 million Friday through Monday. Much has been made about the film industry’s struggles to tap into pop culture the way it once more regularly did – that TV and streaming options and a dearth of fresh ideas have diminished the power of the big screen.

But when Hollywood does manufacture a must-see theatrical event, it has increasingly been propelled by the power of inclusivity. Just as Jordan Peele’s Oscar-nominated “Get Out” ($253 million worldwide on a $4.5 million production budget) and Patty Jenkins “Wonder Woman” ($821.1 million) did before it, “Black Panther” captured the zeitgeist by the potent combination of top-notch filmmaking (the film stands at 97 percent fresh on Rotten Tomatoes), studio backing and an audience hungry to see itself represented on the big screen in a way it seldom has before.

At the box office, inclusion is paying – and often, it’s paying off big time.

“Diversity does in fact, sell,” said Darnell Hunt, a professor and director of social science at UCLA whose research has detailed the connection between diversity and bottom lines. “In hindsight, it’s kind of a no-brainer. The American public is about 40 percent people of color now, and we know that people of color over-index in terms of media consumption. The patterns we’ve been seeing are only becoming more pronounced as time goes on.”

“Black Panther” debuted with $361 million in worldwide ticket sales, setting up the $200 million film for a theatrical run that should easily eclipse $1 billion. History is assured. Just months after Jenkins helmed the biggest box-office hit directed by a woman, Ryan Coogler will set a new mark for films directed by an African American. The debut, the best ever for February, is the fifth highest of all time, not accounting for inflation.

At a time where hits are hard to come by for Hollywood, diversity in storytelling is proving to be not only a just cause, but a box-office imperative.

“If you want to succeed on the global stage, certainly in the tent-pole business, you have to have diversity in storytelling, in the characters that you put in front of the camera, in the artisans you put behind the camera – to be able to get that better, richer storytelling and to drive huge results,” said Dave Hollis, distribution chief for Disney. “The results speak for themselves.”

Hollis pointed to the many factors that made “Black Panther” a hit: Coogler’s direction, the stewardship of Kevin Feige’s Marvel, the reliability of the brand. But he also noted a developing pattern for Disney – that inclusive films are both richer for their diversity and, often, richer for the bottom line.

“It feels like the right thing to do. It makes for better, richer storytelling, and we’re a business. It’s something that’s just delivered big, huge box office,” said Hollis. “When we have leaned into and had inclusion and representation as part of the mix, it’s just really worked. When you think about ‘Star Wars” and ‘Rogue One,’ the female protagonist leading those stories. Also ‘Moana’ or ‘Coco.’ ‘Coco’ has been an absolute juggernaut.”

“Coco,” which is expected to win the Oscar for best animated feature next month, has gross more than $730 million worldwide. It’s the biggest budget release starring an all-Latino cast.

Rian Johnson’s “Star Wars: The Last Jedi,” which has grossed $1.3 billion worldwide, did more than any previous “Star Wars” film to elevate its female characters, and featured the widely hailed breakout star Kelly Marie Tran.

By promoting diversity in its films, Disney has faced some backlash from social-media critics who deride films like “The Last Jedi” and Sony’s 2015’s female-led “Ghostbusters” as politically correct overreach. Some fans have even gone to the extraordinary length of trying to drive down audience scores for those films.

But consider the fate of movies that haven’t tried as hard to be culturally authentic. Paramount’s “Ghost in the Shell,” which starred Scarlett Johansson in a role originally written as a cyborg in a Japanese woman’s body, last year bombed at the box office after a backlash over Johansson’s casting.

Meanwhile, the diverse cast of Universal’s “The Fast and the Furious” films helped make it one of the most bankable franchises in movies. Other standout hits have included “Girls Trip” – the biggest comedy of 2017 – and Sony’s unexpectedly lucrative “Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle.” The film, starring Dwayne Johnson and Kevin Hart, reigned over the January box office as the no. 1 film on four weekends.

“Jumanji” has grossed more than $904 million worldwide, including more than a half a billion dollars overseas. The old argument that films starring African-American actors don’t travel well has never had a worse two months. “Black Panther” opened with $160 million abroad, even without several markets (China, Japan, Russia) yet open.

And in Hollywood, nothing talks like money.

“‘Black Panther’ can be an important first step toward really dispelling the myth that has held Hollywood back for generations in terms of telling the stories that we certainly want to see in this country but I think that the rest of the world wants to see, too,” said Hunt.

Studies have also shown that diverse casts attract wider audiences. Last year, talent agency CAA found that of the top 10 grossing films in 2016, 47 percent of the opening-weekend audience was made up of people of color, up 2 percent from the year before. The effect was even more pronounced in the biggest hits. Seven of the 10 highest-grossing films from 2016 had opening weekend audiences more than 50 percent white.

The audience for “Black Panther” was 65 percent non-white, including 37 percent black, according to comScore.

Latinos and African Americans are also more eager moviegoers, according to the Motion Picture Association of America. In the MPAA’s most recent report, it found that though Latinos make up 18 percent of the U.S. population, they account for 23 percent of frequent moviegoers. Though African Americans are 12 percent of the population, they make up 15 percent of frequent moviegoers.

“If you look at some of the bigger blockbusters from the last year, they were representative of what the audience are looking for, how they’re feeling,” said Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst for comScore. “These films reflect society and then society reflects back on the films. That’s when you get to these much bigger than expected debuts. It becomes more than a movie. It becomes a cultural event.”

Communal movie-going may be under siege from other entertainment options. But films like “Black Panther” are making movie theaters more communal than ever.

 
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