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The Family Dog (excerpt)
L to R: Human #1, MAXIMILLION, Human #2, GRANDMA, Human #3, HAMLET, Human #4 It was a good life for a dog. We had returned to our mesa,...

Shoga Films
Aug 23 min read


How Jews Birthed the Dog That Elvis Stole From Big Mama Thornton
The real history behind the song "Hound Dog"

Shoga Films
Aug 24 min read


“Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me” - A Queer Jewish Woman Writes The Most Famous Poem In American Literature
Emma Lazarus, a privileged Sephardic Jewish poet, transformed her awakening Jewish identity into passionate advocacy for Eastern European refugees and, through her sonnet The New Colossus, redefined the Statue of Liberty as a beacon of welcome for immigrants.

Shoga Films
Jul 24 min read


A Catastrophic Start
An in depth look at Portrait of Jason by Shirley Clarke

Shoga Films
Jun 134 min read


At 54, I Hit My First Film Festival Entry Out of the Ballpark
Shoga Films creator Robert Philipson reflects on his successful first film festival submission "Ma Rainey's Lesbian Licks"

Shoga Films
Jun 104 min read


A Fruitless Attempt To Save My "Daughter" and Me From Eternal Damnation
Robert Philipson attempts to save him and his daughter from eternal damnation

Shoga Films
May 194 min read


With Friends Like These ... (MAGA bludgeons the libs with antisemitism)
MAGA bludgeons the libs with antisemitism

Shoga Films
May 193 min read


Hating Richard Nixon -- A Family Tradition
Born in 1950, I knew about Richard Nixon from the dawn of consciousness -- and he was synonymous with Evil. I inherited my contempt of...

Shoga Films
Apr 36 min read


David Becomes Goliath
Prime Minister Golda Meir and Defense Minister Moshe Dayan meet with troops on the Golan Heights On October 5, 1973, the State of Israel...

Shoga Films
Apr 35 min read


"The Pit Bull of AIDS Litigation"
Alice Philipson - Berkeley based solo practitioner, 1987 In the 1980s, queer lawyers were still reluctant to come out publicly. They...

Shoga Films
Mar 163 min read


Dogged by Domesticity
Alice Dunbar-Nelson painted by Laura Wheeler Waring “A rising tide lifts all boats,” as the saying goes, but in the case of the possible...

Shoga Films
Mar 164 min read


Black Rebellions I Have Known: The L.A. Episodes
Watts Rebellion, Los Angeles, California, August 13, 1965 Having grown up swathed in unrecognized white privilege (i.e. The Fifties), I...

Shoga Films
Feb 194 min read


The Harlem Renaissance (The California Connection)
Arna Bontemps For scholars and historians of the period, it is well understood that the Harlem Renaissance refers to a quickening of...

Shoga Films
Feb 194 min read


The Evilest Queer Jew in America
A panel from the AIDS quilt The list of evil queer Jews with any sort of public profile isn't long, but Roy Cohn, lawyer to the worst...

Shoga Films
Jan 84 min read


My Mother Scotches A Communist Smear Campaign
Raising her family in a newly-created suburban neighborhood on a Pasadena mesa during the 1950s, my mother always knew she was a square...

Shoga Films
Jan 85 min read


Christmas Clobbers Hanukkah
Our home town Christmas tree, Union Square, San Francisco Jewish holidays fall broadly into two categories – those confirming the...

Shoga Films
Dec 4, 20243 min read


Unplugging from Christmas
Christmas is upon us, and I glide through the capitalist frenzy and social anxiety with frictionless insouciance. I buy no Christmas...

Shoga Films
Dec 4, 20243 min read


The Central African Republic: Requiem for a Failed Nation(2014)
HUMAN NATURE OR AFRICAN DEPRAVITY? It’s all depressingly familiar: an artificially cobbled state created under colonialism explodes in...

Shoga Films
Nov 23, 20246 min read


A Basset in Paris
Lady Hamlet and her humans, 1961 It wasn’t easy for a dog used to the freedom of the San Gabriel Mountains to accommodate herself to the...

Shoga Films
Nov 6, 20243 min read


Paris, je t'aime!
Nous quatre a Paris Jazz paved the way for the establishment of an African American expatriate community in Paris. The French were blown...

Shoga Films
Nov 5, 20243 min read
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