Get curated editors’ picks, peeks behind the scenes, film recommendations and more.
There’s been a French presence in what is today the southern American Midwest near the Mississippi River since 1673. Naming their colony ‘the Illinois Country’ for the native Illiniwek tribes who inhabited it, these first French settlers traded with, preached Catholicism to, and intermarried with local Indigenous communities, resulting in a distinct French Creole heritage and dialect that still reverberates, albeit faintly, in the region today. In this short, the Missouri-born artist Brian Hawkins pairs stunning animation built from watercolours with audio of one of the last native speakers of Illinois Country French recounting a whimsical local folktale that’s been nearly lost to time. Unfolding like a beautiful picture book sprung to life, Hawkins’s work is at once a wondrous act of creativity and of cultural preservation.
Director: Brian Hawkins
Narrator: Pierre Aloysius Boyer
video
Stories and literature
Robert Frost’s poetic reflection on youth, as read in his unforgettable baritone
5 minutes
video
Sex and sexuality
After a sextortion scam, Eugene conducts an unblushing survey of masturbation
14 minutes
video
Film and visual culture
‘Bags here are rarely innocent’ – how filmmakers work around censorship in Iran
8 minutes
video
Language and linguistics
Closed captions suck. Here’s one artist’s inventive project to make them better
8 minutes
video
Thinkers and theories
A rare female scholar of the Roman Empire, Hypatia lived and died as a secular voice
5 minutes
video
Architecture
The celebrated architect who took inspiration from sitting, waiting and contemplating
29 minutes
video
Anthropology
Why are witchcraft accusations so common across human societies?
4 minutes
video
Subcultures
Drop into London’s eclectic skate scene, where newbies and old-timers find community
5 minutes
video
Technology and the self
A deepfake porn victim confronts the pain of having her likeness stolen and vandalised
19 minutes