In Radha Blank’s witty and winning feature debut, The Forty-Year-Old Version, the writer/director adopts a semiautobiographical persona: a hardworking middle-aged playwright and high school teacher who, between hustles to get her latest play produced and after the death of her artist mother, takes to open mic nights as neophyte rapper RadhaMUSprime. Onstage and in the studio with a handsome beats-supplier-turned-paramour, she raps about aging, ambition and life in New York with all the emotional honesty that’s slowly and painfully being drained from her latest play, a Harlem-set gentrification drama mounted by a patronizing white theater producer. Scanning Blank’s own biography—she’s […]
by Mary Harron on Oct 28, 2020Radha Blank writes, directs and stars in The 40-Year-Old Version, about a woman named Radha who struggles with the stigma of being single and struggling with her art at the age of 40. After what seems like a barrage of rejections from theater companies, Radha finally feels reinvigorated when she revisits her long-forgotten love of rapping. She eventually feels torn when interest is finally shown for a play of hers when she is in the midst of working on a rap demo tape. Editor Robert Grigsby Wilson talks about his own love of hip-hop, his own professional trajectory as an […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Feb 3, 2020Whether capturing or creating a world, the objects onscreen tell as much of a story as the people within it. Whether sourced or accidental, insert shot or background detail, what prop or piece of set decoration do you find particularly integral to your film? What story does it tell? Radha’s head wrap. It seems to be a nice fashion accessory. One that nods to Black and African culture and reflects identity and cultural pride. And in a time when women obsess over our looks and feel pressured to express ourselves through hair, a head wrap feels like an act of […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 25, 2020