Last Friday, Israeli soldiers opened fire on a gathering of thousands near the border between Gaza and Israel, ultimately killing 18 Palestinians and reportedly wounding some 700 more. The demonstration was organized to mark "Land Day," an annual commemoration of Palestinian civil resistance, and video evidence has since emerged indicating that at least some of the protestors gunned down from a distance on Friday were either carrying no weapons or actively fleeing—or both.

The incident has drawn pointed criticism from NGOs like Human Rights Watch—which called them "unlawful" and "calculated"—and American politicians like Bernie Sanders, who tweeted, "The killing of Palestinian demonstrators by Israeli forces in Gaza is tragic. It is the right of all people to protest for a better future without a violent response."

The Israeli government has tried to assert it was acting in self defense, claiming protestors had links to Hamas and that activists were throwing molotov cocktails and stones, among other projectiles. The Foreign Affairs Director of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud Party, Eli Hazan, went so far as to assert that "all 30,000" of the protestors were "legitimate targets." Still, even before last Friday's protests, an officer in the Israeli military tweeted what critics suggested was a damning video in anticipation of Land Day featuring images of Israeli soldiers loading and firing sniper rifles along with Arabic captions warning Palestinians to stay away from the border.

Because of the deadly violence, "Land Day" protests made a brief appearance in western press coverage of the this decades-old conflict, but to Palestinians they represent a celebration of a rich history of civil resistance and protest. To get some perspective on the origins of this occasion, as well as the historical significance of some of the worst violence in this conflict in years, we talked to Noura Erakat, a Palestinian-American human rights lawyer and assistant professor at George Mason University. She is also the author of the upcoming book tentatively titled Justice for Some: Law as Politics in the Question of Palestine.

Can you talk a bit about the circumstances that led to the original Land Day protests, which aren't exactly unique to 2018?
You have to go back to the Arab-Israeli war of 1948 and what Israel orchestrated at the time. Eighty percent of the native Palestinian population is removed forcibly from what becomes Israel, and then are denied re-entry and rehabilitation. Israel defines itself as needing to constitute a decisive Jewish demographic majority [and] thereafter describes all those Palestinian refugees as constituting an existential threat. Those Palestinians who were not expelled—there are about 160,000 that remained within Israel—were internally displaced under a military law regime for 18 years, between 1948 and 1966. Under that framework, even though they were not a demographic threat, they were seen as a threat to Israel's claim that the Jewish sovereignty that was established there was temporally and spatially contiguous—and to do that you have to be able to diminish, deny, and erase the existence of a native population that had claims to sovereignty beforehand.

Various legal justifications were used to seize private land between 1948 and the original Land Day protests within what is now considered Israel, right?
Under the framework of the martial law regime, Israel instituted a land revocation program that was executed in four primary stages so that, by 1960, about two million dunums of private Palestinian land were confiscated without compensation and were marked for Jewish settlement, either explicitly under the auspices of the Jewish National Fund or less explicitly under the Israel Land Authority through what they call the administration of state land.

After 18 years under martial law, Palestinians inside Israel were technically granted Israeli citizenship, and formed political parties. Is that what led to the modern version of the protests?
In 1976, Abnaa’ al Balad (Sons of The Land)—a political party that as a matter of its politics refuses to recognize Israel—declared Land Day to protest the confiscation of their land to build yet another Jewish settlement, within Israel. On the day of that protest, six unarmed protestors—who were citizens of the state—are executed, shot to death. That is what has been commemorated every single year.

What is the meaning of Land Day now, though, given the brutal blockade of Gaza by both Israel and Egypt and the economic deprivation there?
Land Day is one of many days of extreme violence, but it also represents the fact that Palestinians do not recognize these arbitrary demarcations that Israel tries to establish, distinguishing the West Bank, Gaza, the refugees, and the citizens of Israel. As far as Palestinians are concerned, we are one nation, and these are violent fragmentations. But within all those fragmentations, Israel's policy towards Palestinians is predicated on erasure, dispossession and containment, so if they can't remove them, they will concentrate them into very small areas—that's certainly very obvious in the West Bank.

They're also obvious in the Gaza strip, which is the largest concentration, but if you look within Israel, those concentrations exist as well. You can see them now very clearly as Israel is forcibly removing the Palestinian population in the Negev desert, the Bedouin population there, and they are trying to concentrate them into urban townships. And the largest concentration of Palestinians within Israel is in the north in the Galilee.

What made the protests this year so ripe for unusual conflict?
This year, Palestinians in Gaza—as a part of a grassroots effort—decided that they would stage great marches of return that span from March 30 to May 15. From commemorating the 1976 Land Day to also commemorating the Nakba or the Palestinian catastrophe on May 15, 1948.* That's the context for what's happening—this didn't come out of nowhere. Palestinians have this protest every year all over the world, [but] this one was different because, one, of its massive scale—30,000 people—and two, the fact that that massive organization is happening in Gaza, which Israel has completely securitized and placed under a land siege and a naval blockade.

The Israeli Government is refusing to admit wrongdoing in the killings despite overwhelming evidence that most protestors were unarmed. They're pointing to the role of Hamas in organizing the protests, however. Do those justifications track at all?
The only way any of Israel's [government] discourse makes sense is if you accept that Palestinians, by virtue of existing, are being violent. Any other sane person watching that cannot accept that any of this. it's like trying to fit a square into a circle—it just doesn't fit, there was no lethal harm, there was no threat to any Israelis. This was a grassroots movement that was co-opted by the political parties, but who maintained its nonviolent framework because they have much more to lose than they have to gain if this becomes violent.

The media has covered the violence—to its credit—but much of the context is missing, no?
The mainstream media cycle is not equipped to be able to respond, or to understand instances of mass civil protests, because it only employs a discourse of violence. It's especially hard to distinguish legitimate and illegitimate violence in the question of Palestine now, because we aren't in a moment of anti-colonial fervor. It stands out as one of the last standing, not the only, but one of the last standing colonies and it's been subsumed within the framework of the global war on terror, which obscures this incredibly rich, long, history that provides a context of the Palestinian struggle as a struggle against settler colonialism.

Israeli officials have maintained Gaza is not besieged—a key point of contention looming over this whole saga, right?
Look, it's very obvious: There are five points of ingress and egress in the Gaza strip, and there is also the Mediterranean shoreline. Israel controls four out of those five points, as well as the entire shore, and maintains that Palestinians can't swim out beyond three nautical miles. Egypt controls the only other point, which is the Rafah border, but it controls that in collusion with Israel. Since 2007, there has been a complete closure of all of those points of ingress and egress, as well as the shoreline, so you have a land siege as well as a naval blockade where Israel literally controls everything that goes in and goes out—so much so that it can regulate and administer the number of calories [about 2000] that Palestinians can consume just above starvation.

If that is not a land and a navel siege, I would like to know what it is. That's like saying up is down and down is up and war is peace.

*Correction 04/04/2018: A previous version of this interview suggested Israeli Independence Day was also on May 15 when in fact it is traditionally marked on May 14. We regret the error.

Follow Patrick Hilsman on Twitter.

This article originally appeared on VICE US.

Makanaka Tuwe is a Zimbabwe-New Zealand writer living in Auckland.

Black Panther provided a positive boost of melanin on our screens, a boom to the box office and—I hope—sparked the beginning of undoing years of narrow representations in endless slave movies. If we aren’t slaves we are gangsters, thots, needing aid or are around wildlife hitting the bongos, Africa smile plastered on our faces; each image serving as a barrier to how society experiences us and how we experience society.

But why do I feel so strongly about this? I was born in Zimbabwe and moved to New Zealand with my family when I was 10 years old. I know the future of black people largely depends on the opinions of those who rely on mainstream media for information about Africa and its people, black people. Not only are such narratives tiring, they are damaging as they inform interactions with the justice system, education system, the workforce and socially. I mean it isn’t uncommon for people to be surprised at how “articulate” I am. The idea that I grew up in a backward environment and learnt English here i.e was “civilised in the West” and, worse yet, the exoticism of my “different” appearance is why I stay unsurprised at how deeply systematic this racism shit is, but it’s all good it’s casual isn’t it?

It isn’t uncommon for people to be surprised at how “articulate” I am.

Recently, two documentaries I've seen have given me a chance to better understand the African continent through stories that deal with identity, politics, love, family, religion, sex and life. While one left me empowered, the other left me questioning the lens in which stories are told through and reinforced how necessary it is to engage in conversations that critic a colonial lens, after all accurate representation matters and these depictions will continue until we tackle these issues.

In Sacred Water, Director Olivier Jourdain introduces us to Vestine Dusabe a sexologist and radio host on a mission to promote sexual pleasure. I was thrilled that in a world that demonised female sexual wellbeing my people were having open conversations about kunyaza or female squirting on a late-night radio show, in classrooms, on the streets and at the watering hole. Us backward Africans were talking about squirting and running sex workshops focused on female pleasure, how progressive and liberal!

While achieving kunyanza is packaged as a sexual practice that sheds a light on gender relations in Rwanda, I was confused at how male pleasure was the driving force. How did the empowerment of women using sexual resources and being encouraged to normalise their sexual wellbeing and pleasure have anything to do with keeping, pleasing and satisfying the men?

In interviews we hear women say “It [kunyanza] was created for our husbands’ peace” and that it is a way of stopping their partners from cheating. We see women visiting doctors to get herbal concoctions because they have no “water” and it is important for the man to “find the water” otherwise he will cheat. Not only does this sound like “boys will be boys”, it also diminishes the women’s existence to a thing responsible for satisfying her husband or else.

At the same time I had to check myself. Internally I was battling not othering the documentary by viewing it with my Western worldview. Yes, I am African and I experience the world as a black, Zimbabwean woman but being raised in New Zealand, in a culture different to the one I or my parents were born in means as much as I hate to admit it, my ideas on what is right or wrong are Westernised. For example the idea of what a man, womanhood or what gender roles each plays in society is different from place to place so who am I to dictate what female empowerment is and isn’t?

What I found interesting was the fact that the documentary was written and directed by a French man. Why was the gaze of an outsider: colonial, male and white focused on the sexual pleasure of African women? Being a black woman in these streets means two things: exotic other from the jungles of Africa and now Wakanda or a booty twerking video vixen with animalistic sexual prowess. For yonks we have been subjected to media of tribal African women showing their bare breasts. Something I think is not different to the treatment Sarah Baartman, a South African woman who was forced to tour Europe as a circus freak in the 19th century due to her buttocks. How was this documentary different in not dissolving the personal and sexual agency of African women? The medium has changed but has the message? Personally, I see this documentary as part of a discussion about the intersecting attitudes and beliefs towards gender and sex when influenced by Westernisation and local traditions.

Now, don’t get me wrong I am not saying because Jourdain is white he shouldn’t have created the documentary but we can’t not have conversation about white gaze and its voyeuristic history on black bodies and also the danger of stories that add to stereotypes. Now more than ever we must engage in dialogue that seeks to remedy misrepresentation and guard stories zealously especially in the wake of National Geographic's 130 year old delayed and questionable apology. I say questionable because it’s profitable to be woke, baby.

Pieced together through archive footage of electric live performances and interviews from family and friends, Mama Africa took me on a journey through the 76 years of the phenomenal Miriam Makeba’s life.

After appearing in Lionel Rogosin’s 1959 apartheid expose Come Back Africa Miriam finds herself banned from her homeland South Africa and lands in New York as a performer at the Village Vanguard. Soon after arriving Miriam is swept to higher heights by Harry Belafonte and finds herself performing hits like ‘Pata Pata’, ‘Malaika’ and ‘Soweto Blues’ around the world.

While Miriam’s musical career doesn’t begin in New York, it is there her influence is felt and ripples through politics and her position as civil rights activist cemented through her song lyrics that urged for democratic change. Prior to her arrival in New York, Miriam’s career was already booming in South Africa having sung and toured with the Cuban Brothers, the Manhattan Brothers and founded the Skylarks—an all woman singing group.

In 1963 we see Miriam addressing the United Nations advocating for the rights of blacks in South Africa who were living under inhumane and segregated conditions enforced by apartheid. She becomes the first black woman to speak at the United Nations and from there gains her nickname Mama Africa for the way she brought attention to the state affairs in her homeland. Upon Nelson Mandela’s release, Miriam returns home to directly influence another generation of artists.

Making use of photos and footage, Kaurismäki captures the life of a woman who was loved not only by her family and friends but by the world and everyone she came across. As the documentary finished I couldn’t help but be left wanting more of Miriam Makeba, surely where there is woman there is magic! The film managed to represent her exactly as she was: artist, crusader, lover, mother and grandmother.

Being able to see a version of myself left me inspired not only to slay—she served looks!—but to continue telling more stories that are aimed at offering a wider selection of black representation. As I’ve always said films introduce us to new worlds, realities and spaces unimaginable, let our introductions be handled with care.

Sacred Waters and Mama Africa are showing at the fourth annual African Film Festival New Zealand 2018. The festival runs from April 5 to April 15 at Rialto Cinemas Newmarket, Auckland and Wednesday May 9 to May 13 at Embassy Theatre Wellington.

Follow Maka on Instagram.

This article originally appeared on VICE NZ.

A very particular idea of Social Justice™ is part of the Liberal brand now. This isn’t a complaint about political correctness run amok. It’s good that this country is finally in a place to talk openly about its deep-rooted systems of racism and misogyny, even if the process does involve slogging through 8,000 op-eds about an angsty grad student from Laurier every other week. The real problem is that the Liberals are doing such a bad job of social reform that they risk leading progressive activists down a political cul-de-sac.

Let’s take the government’s latest effort to overhaul the criminal justice system. In part a response to the Stanley trial, where an all-white jury acquitted Gerald Stanley of murder and manslaughter in the death of young Cree man Colten Boushie, the Liberals’ stated aim is to create a more racially equitable (and efficient) justice system, achieved by abolishing peremptory challenges (ie the ability for lawyers to arbitrarily dismiss jurors, widely believed to have resulted in Stanley’s all-white jury) and scrapping preliminary inquiries. Sounds great!

Except, actually, maybe not. Preliminary inquiries play their own role in speeding up the court system by ruling out spurious trials before they happen, and the process of peremptory challenges are more often used to ensure diverse juries than racially homogenous ones. Also, on top of all this, the bill is also going to increase maximum sentences and ignore mandatory minimums, both of which are expected to negatively impact marginalized groups the most.

It turns out that something is lost in translation when the conceptual language of critical social theory is filtered through the stupefying machinery of mass partisan politics. Of course, my justice system will be intersectional, or it will be bullshit. But a little knowledge is more dangerous than much ignorance—especially when you match it with the breathtaking cynicism of the Canadian Liberal Party. The road to Hell is paved with good intentions and the Devil is in the details, but wow what a deal we got on the public tender.

This is the Janus named Justin Trudeau. Any precious pearl-clutching that the government is going too far, too fast is wildly off the mark. For feminist emancipation, we get entrepreneurial subsidies for women instead of accessible childcare. Legal marijuana is less about overturning the injustices of prohibition than in making a bunch of ex-cops and politicians rich. Real Climate Action is an emissions tax plus bitumen pipelines. “Reconciliation” means renaming federal buildings and acknowledging traditional territory but emphatically does not extend to drinking water or recognizing living land rights. (Recall Fanon: in the colonies, “the master laughs at the consciousness of the slave. What he wants from the slave is not recognition but work.”)

There is more at stake here than being disappointed that a politician promised one thing and delivered another. Obviously, these policy approaches risk producing suboptimal outcomes in and of themselves. But every time the Liberals use concepts like ‘social justice’ as props to pose for the camera instead of a principled guide to political thought and action, they undercut the marginalized groups they’re ostensibly trying to help.

Just look at how the Canadian public and media have handled the suggestion that systemic racism exists in this country. If the Liberals’ half-assed vision of “identity politics” is the hill that social justice warriors allow themselves to die on—and surely it is, because the NDP is aping it—they will already have done most of the legwork for Canada’s race-revanchist right.

It’s hard to tell which of the government’s progressive commitments are cold political calculations and which are genuinely in of good faith. The confusion for all this lies squarely at the feet of Trudeau, who quickly burned through two years of global goodwill getting high on his own supply. There is no comfort in Pilate’s sunny disposition; you will be thrown to the mob the moment it becomes politically expedient.

Or, worse: after the next election, it’s Barabbas in Roman robes who marches you off to Golgotha.

Follow Drew Brown on Twitter.

Raccoons exist in this weird pocket of the animal kingdom comprised of adorable animals that look cute but are actually mean as fuck. Up to this point, humans and raccoons have reached something of a truce agreement, where we don't try to domesticate them, let them feast on our trash, and send our cops to help them out of sewer grates when they eat too much in exchange for their mercy. But it looks like our time of great interspecies peace is about to come to an end—because the age of the zombie raccoon is apparently upon us.

This March, residents of Youngstown, Ohio, began noticing something weird about their local raccoon population. The animals were coming out during the day and standing on their back legs, bearing their teeth and staggering around like extras in a George Romeo movie, WKBN reports.

"[The raccoon] would stand up on his hind legs, which I’ve never seen a raccoon do before, and he would show his teeth and then he would fall over backward and go into almost a comatose condition," Robert Coggeshall, who was walking his dogs when he spotted the raccoon in question, told WKBN. Eventually, the raccoon would shake itself out of the daze, rise back up to its hind legs, and stagger forward, before repeating the whole process over again. It was, to put it in Coggeshall's words, "extremely strange."

Ohio police have received over a dozen reports of similar sightings of these zombie-like raccoons terrorizing the Youngstown area. No one is certain exactly what is causing the weird-ass behavior, but the Ohio Department of Natural Resources says the raccoons may be suffering from a disease called distemper, rather than rabies.

According to PetMD, distemper is a deadly virus that can affect raccoons as well as dogs, skunks, and other animal species, but is not contagious for humans. It starts with fever symptoms but "in the later stages of the disease, the virus starts attacking the other systems of the body, particularly the nervous system," PetMD writes. "The brain and spinal cord are affected and the [animal] may start having fits, seizures, paralysis, and attacks of hysteria."

An incurable virus that starts out innocuously before attacking the brain and causing hysteria? Sounds terrifyingly familiar. If this is round one of the zombie raccoon outbreak, get your melee weapons ready and prepare to fend off an angry swarm of these guys:

Sign up for our newsletter to get the best of VICE delivered to your inbox daily.

Follow VICE on Twitter.

This article originally appeared on VICE US.

This story appears in VICE magazine's Dystopia and Utopia Issue. Click HERE to subscribe.

On September 25, 2013, in Regina, Saskatchewan, Kelly Goforth’s body was found, inside a hockey bag, at the bottom of a dumpster. Goforth’s killer, a white male named Clayton Bo Eichler, also killed Richele Bear, another Indigenous woman, and Goforth’s family suspects he may have murdered others. These are not isolated incidents in Saskatchewan, one of many areas in Canada struggling with a shameful history of abuse, neglect, and indifference toward its First Nations women and people.

The Saskatchewan Association of Chiefs of Police estimates that 51 percent of missing women in Saskatchewan are Indigenous, though they make up only 16.1 percent of the population. In 2015, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission found that Canada was guilty of committing cultural genocide against Indigenous people—the impact of which has been intergenerational and gendered. The 1.67 million Indigenous people living in Canada—First Nations, Métis, and Inuit—experience high levels of poverty and are plagued by addiction, family breakdown, and some of the highest suicide rates in the world. Yet women and girls continue to face the brunt of a systemic racism prevalent throughout the country.

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police estimated that between 1980 and 2012, around 1,200 Indigenous women were murdered or went missing. The Native Women’s Association of Canada argues that these numbers could be as high as 4,000, because many cases that police classify as unsuspicious—drug overdoses, natural causes, suicide—may have been foul play according to victims’ families. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau promised an independent national inquiry into the issue during his campaign in 2015, but it didn’t begin until August 2016, and it took until May 2017 for the first public hearing to start. Its stated mandate is to “examine the systemic causes of all forms of violence against Indigenous women, girls, and members of the LGBTQ2S community in Canada.”

The two-year process has less than a year left and has been met with delays, disappointment, and controversy. According to the Canadian Broadcast Corporation, more than 180 family members and 80 supporters have signed a letter requesting Trudeau to reboot the inquiry. The inquiry has faced more than 20 resignations and layoffs, including high-profile resignations from the commissioner Marilyn Poitras and the executive director Michèle Moreau. Communication issues and lack of transparency are increasing frustrations among families seeking justice.

After 15 years away, I returned to Saskatchewan, my home, and spent the month of April 2017 traveling across the province. I wanted to portray the families of missing and murdered Indigenous women (MMIW) in a way that wasn’t desensitized—with natural portraiture, as well as evidential landscapes, that told their stories in a humane and intimate manner. I photographed only women and documented them in their most emotional spaces: the places where they felt closest to their loved ones. What I found is a community of strong tradition and incredible resilience.

Aleisha Charles, 21, shows a tattoo dedicated to her mother, Happy Charles, whose name in Cree, “Kokuminahkisis,” means “black widow.” Aleisha and her three sisters traveled to Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, from La Ronge, more than 100 miles, to search for their mother, who went missing at the beginning of April 2017. Though their mother is addicted to intravenous drugs and has been in and out of rehab since she was a teenager, she has never been missing for this long, according to Regina Poitras, Happy’s mother. Happy Charles remains missing to this day.

Dannataya, 11, and her aunt Michelle Burns, 31, nd peace among the trees in Prince Albert. Monica Lee Burns, Dannataya’s mother and Michelle’s twin sister, was murdered by a stranger, 38-year-old white male Todd Daniel McKeaveney, and found dead in a desolate area outside Prince Albert in January 2015. McKeaveney received 13 years in prison. “I feel lonesome a lot. My Elder tells me to pray to the Creator and to go near a tree,” Michelle said. “When you think about all the missing and murdered Indigenous women, they don’t have a voice, so their family members are the ones trying to have a voice. I have to remember that [Dannataya] is watching me. When I walk, I try to walk with good intentions so that when she’s older she won’t end up lost. Her mom would want good things for her.”

Tracey George Heese, 42, sits in a tepee on buffalo skin, a symbol that reminds her of her late mother, Winnifred George. Winnifred was murdered and discovered next to a park bench in Edmonton, Alberta, more than 20 years ago. Tracey still has no answers. “This buffalo skin represents Canada, this North America. This was [our ancestors’] land. I think of all the buffalo that were slaughtered [here]... Are aboriginal women to be sacri ced as the buffalo have?” said Tracey. “Not enough is being done. The Canadian system is derailing us... growing up and hearing of these deaths of our aboriginal women, it doesn’t matter if we’re educated. All you have to say is she’s aboriginal, and people have that stereotype.”

Diane Big Eagle is pictured with her grandchildren— Talon, ten, and Cassidy, 14—and their cat, Waf es, in their favorite park in Regina. Diane’s daughter Danita Big Eagle disappeared more than ten years ago, and her case remains unresolved. Diane has been caring for her grandchildren since. “I want them to be happy,” she said. “When I’m sad, they’re sad; when I get depressed, they get depressed. If I can manage to cope, so will they. I have to make them think she’s somewhere out there... that she’s coming back.”

Tracey George Heese’s eagle feather and buffalo rawhide belt, symbolic items she uses in ceremony and traditional dance, sit atop buffalo skin. “Being initiated into the pow- wow circles has helped me dance forward in life, to claim back my identity... to dance for those who cannot dance,” Tracey said. Since her mother’s death, Tracey has become active in speaking out on the issue of missing and murdered Indigenous women. “It is known when holding eagle feathers to speak only the truth... For me, the MMIW [movement] is to bring awareness for those that can no longer speak.”

Jessica LaPlante, 31, stands on the prairies north of Regina. “Growing up as an Indigenous girl on the prairies, you know you’re not safe. As a teenager, being followed, having white men approach you, there’s that fear. You know how you’re valued in society,” Jessica said. She has become an advocate on the issue of missing and murdered Indigenous women since she has had two family members disappear. “The idea that Indigenous women are less valued than other women is so deeply rooted... Our people are so devalued and dehumanized, until we look at all the factors we can’t do our missing justice.”

A little girl plays at Elder Archie Weenie’s healing center, on the outskirts of Regina, as her mother participates in a sweat lodge. Elder Weenie holds sweat lodges and pipe ceremonies, and offers traditional teachings as a path to healing. Many who participate, including adults and children, have been victims of trauma.

Wood burns in preparation for a sweat lodge on the outskirts of Regina. Many women facing the loss of a loved one have turned to sweat, ceremony, and traditional teachings. “The healing started from that first sweat. I sweat for four days,” said Gwenda Yuzicappi, whose daughter was found dead on Little Black Bear First Nation on May 5, 2008. “I still need all those ceremonies.”

Tanya Sayer, 38, estimates she knows ten Indigenous women who have gone missing or been murdered, including some of serial killer Robert Pickton’s victims. “I’ve been raped, left on the out- skirts of town, held hostage, been involved in gangs,” said Tanya, who says she was sucked into prostitution in her late teens. “The solution is only through the Creator, you have to want your life back,” she said. “There’s a spiritual sickness that comes from residential schools. It’s this trans-generational trauma... When you sober up, it’s just too painful... [The pain] never goes away. You just have to walk with it.” In many cases, women who have been victims of murder or abuse are in vulnerable life circumstances like Tanya. According to Troy Cooper, who was the police chief of Prince Albert for 13 years until moving to Saskatoon this January, “people take comfort in the idea that [murdered victims are] from a high-risk lifestyle, but sex workers are actually victims.”

Gwenda Yuzicappi and her adopted granddaughter Leslie Maple, 16, are pictured outside of their home on Standing Buffalo First Nation, northeast of Regina. Gwenda’s daughter and Leslie’s caregiver, Amber Redman, went missing in 2005. Her remains were located in Little Black Bear First Nation almost three years later. Two men were involved in Amber’s murder, while only one of them was convicted of second-degree murder. Leslie was only five years old at the time. “Leslie was my strength [when Amber went missing],” Yuzicappi said. “She would soothe me and pet my hair. If it wasn’t for Leslie... I don’t know where I’d be.” This was Leslie’s first time discussing Amber’s murder.

Elder Florence Isaac, 84, in her home in Regina. Up until 1996, the Canadian government placed Indigenous people in “residential schools”— boarding schools meant to take them away from their native culture and assimilate them into Canadian society. As a survivor of one of these institutions, Florence is no stranger to shame and trauma as a result of violence and abuse: “We’ve kept the hurt inside. We’ve packed it, we’ve packed it, we’ve packed it. Now that it’s time to bring it up, it’s shameful,” she said. “I feel sorrow. Justice is not really being served to these women... especially when it’s an Indian... If this was a white, it would be a different story. It’s discrimination. This issue [of missing and murdered women] has been going on for a long time, but as I said, nobody listened.”

Shaniqua McAdam, eight, walks in the cemetery toward the grave of her mother, Krista Kenny, in Prince Albert. Krista was murdered at the age of 16 in May 2009. A 21-year- old, Cody Halkett, beat her to death with a wooden stake. Shaniqua now lives without parents and stays with her grandmother Loretta Henderson. Almost 90 per- cent of Canada’s missing and murdered Indigenous women were parents.

FROM LEFT TO RIGHT: Marcia Bird, 19; Margaret Bird, 20; Aleisha Charles, 21; and Ariel Charles, 17, of La Ronge, pictured in Prince Albert, while searching for their mother. Some of the daughters had vivid dreams about where their mother might be, and with little police support, instigated a search on their own. In November, the police finally helped organize a search in which around 15 family and community members spent the weekend looking around an area six miles or so north of Prince Albert.

Shayleen Goforth, 28, at Wascana Lake in Regina, where she remembers better times with her sister Kelly Goforth, who was found murdered on September 25, 2013. “I had to forgive [the killer, Clayton Bo Eichler] to feel peace within myself...I was so sick. I went to my Elder, and I had a good sweat and a smudge, and I told God I forgive the man who killed my sister... I believe God changes people, so I really hope he changes Clayton... Kelly was the foundation of our family.”

This article originally appeared on VICE US.

Wes Anderson's latest feature film, Isle of Dogs, is a love letter to Japanese cinema and man's best friend. It's also a hugely ambitious stop-motion behemoth that required 2,200 puppets and 250 hand-crafted miniature sets to bring to life. A new video featurette, premiering exclusively below, documents the gargantuan artistic effort that went into the film's production design. An example: the team made 150 scale models of skyscrapers to create a picturesque cityscape that Anderson only used for two shots, according to producer Jeremy Dawson.

There are two stunning world divided between the hundreds of sets created for Isle of Dogs. Megasaki City is filled with fantastical Japanese architecture worthy of a Hayao Miyazaki film, while Trash Island's wasteland recalls the samurai Westerns of Akira Kurosawa. Anderson clearly asserts himself in details like the urban metropolis' retro communication technology and the meticulously-organized garbage explored by the titular dogs. "Parts of it are bright white paper. Parts of it are rusted cars. Parts of it are black TV screens," said director of photography Tristan Oliver. All the different pieces of trash are organized, in typical Anderson style, like different types of pieces in an erector set.

Image courtesy Fox Searchlight Pictures

The Fantastic Mr. Fox and Grand Budapest Hotel director is known for his distinctive cinematic style, and Isle of Dogs has gotten largely positive reviews for its artistic merit. But the film has garnered some controversy for Anderson's treatment of Japanese culture and largely white cast. The flick has also spurred a long-running conspiracy theory that Anderson actually hates dogs, exacerbated by the fact that he doesn't have one. Instead, he calls a pygmy goat his best friend.

But Isle of Dogs pushes stop-motion animation to exciting, ambitious new heights, and this behind-the-scenes look at how the film was made makes it abundantly clear how impressive Anderson's artistry really is.

Sign up for our newsletter to get the best of VICE delivered to your inbox daily.

Follow Beckett Mufson on Twitter.

This article originally appeared on VICE US.

Some dreams are so outlandish that they can only exist in the depths of one’s imagination. Others are so maddeningly simple that a person can spend a lifetime trying to bring them to fruition. Xernona Clayton dedicated her life to pursuing the latter alongside the most famous dreamer in history, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

The pioneering activist and media mogul told VICE in a phone interview that she was less of a dreamer and more of a doer—particularly when it came to seeking equal rights for African-Americans. Sadly, 50 years after the assassination of Dr. King, even the act of guiding his dream from an abstract thought to a reality remains one of the most hard-fought battles in America—but one Clayton has never abandoned.

In the new HBO documentary King in the Wilderness, the former television executive and member of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference shares how the final three years of Dr. King’s life pushed his radical idea of equality for all races further from his grasp. As a montage of clips of Dr. King marching and preaching around the United States flashes across the screen, Clayton can be heard saying something unconscionable: “It had bothered him deeply that the nation had turned against him. And I always tell people he died of a broken heart.”

Amidst the rise of the alt-right, rampant police brutality, and a president whose inflammatory rhetoric is racially divisive, viewers are poised to ask themselves: Is Dr. King’s vision a dream deferred? From voicing his dissenting opinion on the Vietnam War to coming face-to-face with an enhanced form of racism in Chicago, in retrospect, it is not surprising to see Dr. King lament, “that the dream that I had that day has in many points turned into a nightmare.” When VICE spoke with Clayton, she explained that behind the media appearances and the fanfare was just a mortal man and his friends trying to do the right thing and getting stopped at every turn.

To Clayton, enduring the trauma of racism only propelled her to continue fighting to achieve Dr. King's dream. As the first black person in the South to have her own television show, she made sure coverage of the movement gave an accurate depiction of the horrors of racism and the resilience of those who fought to abolish it. And as the founder and president of the Trumpet Awards Foundation, she celebrates blacks who are aiding in that battle against inequality. I spoke to Clayton about her lifetime of advocacy on behalf of black people and her relationship with her close friend, Dr. King. Here's what she had to say.

This article has been edited for clarity and length.

VICE: Why did you become an activist?
Xernona Clayton: When you’re born in America, it doesn’t take but a little while into your life to run into some difficulties. You realize there wasn’t empathy. There wasn’t justice. There was a big difference in how you were treated as a black person. You always knew it. But it takes a commitment when you realize it’s going to stay like this if someone doesn’t do something.

Describe defining moment in your life that affirmed this realization.
I had a painful experience when I was in college in Nashville, Tennessee. We went out one night—two couples—and on the way back to the dorm, we passed a hamburger place. We went in—all of us had money—and we wanted some hamburgers. The man [behind the counter] had a butcher knife that seemed a yard long. He picked it up and said, “You know you don’t belong here. If you niggers don’t get out of here, I’ll chop all of your heads off.” Of course, we immediately went out. That hurts. It still hurts. When they said, “You’re not good enough,” “You don’t belong.” When you hear phrases like that it does something to your psyche. What prevents you from belonging? What really prevents you from being OK? That never left me.

How did you go about combatting discriminatory practices prior to joining the SCLC?
My sister and I had very good friends in the Urban League in Chicago. They had a program where they wanted to see if major companies who seemed like nice guys really were. They were testing employment practices and my sister and I were asked to participate. We would look at the wanted pages and see if there’s a job opening. Our strategy was to be no more than 10 minutes, time wise, from the location. We would call and say, “I see you have an ad in the paper for a clerk-typist. Is that still available?” The young lady said, “Yes.” Well, they’re just 10 minutes away. I would go and as soon as I would walk in the door I said, “I called about the job that was in the paper.” She said, “Oh, I’m so sorry. We just filled it.” How do you fill a position in 10 minutes? You know then what the problem is. That was a test but you just knew that a reality though.

How did you become involved in the SCLC?
I was living in Los Angeles with my late husband, Ed Clayton. He [was] the editor of Jet magazine so he became known throughout the industry. Dr. King was in Atlanta and realized the SCLC was growing to the point where they needed staffing in the areas of public relations and speech writing. Every place he went on his search he’d run into people and say, “I’m looking for good journalists. Who do you know who would fit my bill?” And they’d say, “Oh, Ed Clayton he’s very smart.” Dr. King called him and asked him if he would be interested in coming to Atlanta and seeing if he could help them out. He came to Atlanta just to stay for two weeks. He met Mrs. King, of course, and she was planning to use her musical ability to raise funds for the SCLC. Ed said, “You could use churches as your launching pad. My wife could help you.” He put us together long distance and we started traveling together on her first tour. With some encouragement from the Kings, we moved down here to join the SCLC.

What was your specific job in the SCLC?
I was involved in almost everything we did. At that time, there were people who wanted to refer to Dr. King as a chauvinist because [they didn’t] see many women involved in the movement. Well, he had a high regard for women and a lot of things that had to be done. You just don’t get up and march. You’ve got to plan the march with legal preparation. You’ve got to get water for the marchers. You’ve got to map out the route. You’ve got to have money available if they get thrown in jail. You’ve got to have a hospital plan if they get hurt. A lot of that was my area of responsibility.

Today, Dr. King is a beloved figure. But how did people perceive him during the 1960s?
Everybody didn’t like Dr. King. There were people in some cities and neighborhoods that would say, “Well, he’s coming here with the movement and all they’re going to do is tear up the city and leave. He’s just coming out to destroy our town.” All of his programs were not well received because it depends on the leadership of the cities. You’ve got people who denounced him and criticized him because some of that happened. When you come to a city, you’re going to disturb the tranquility. But that’s what it was designed to do. He never went uninvited. The local community would have to invite him. That was his requirement. He didn’t go to just tear up a city. He went to improve it.

The film shows that Dr. King had issues with the term, "Black Power.” What do you think of the Black Lives Matter movement? Would Dr. King have liked it?
I had problems with it initially. Just the name alone. Dr. King was so effective in having us think in terms of totality—the total man, the total community, the total human existence—that we’re all men and women together. Blacks and white together. We’ve been separated based on skin color, but we really are the same. He wouldn’t pick out just the men or the women. The terminology disturbed a lot of us that felt like, “Oh gee. Why do they have to say that?” But, once I talked with some of them, I could see the intent was not to be segregated. In too many cities across the country, black men [are] being disproportionately brutalized and mistreated by policemen in a higher number than anyone else. I understood later the rationale but not the language.

How did Dr. King use the media to spread his message?
Oh, he loved the media! That’s how I ended up in television in a sense. He talked about the media being so helpful. He said you could talk about a dog nipping at the clothes of a kid trying to swim in the pool. But when the media gets a photograph of it, you see it. You no longer have to imagine it. He thought that they played such a vital role in helping to get sight to the problem as he was fighting those issues.

But you had a different philosophy back then.
One day, I was asked to speak to a group of journalists and I told them how much Dr. King valued them. But that this was one area in which I disagreed with him. This was in 1966. There were no black people on television—nobody. I said, “It’s hard for me to see once they’ve gotten the call and the station’s going to cover this inequality properly.” The white assignment editor gives the story to a white reporter who picks up a white cameraman and they go out and document this [discrimination]. They bring the film back to a lily white processor who gives it to a lily white editor and writer who gives it to a lily white assignment chief who gives it to a lily white anchor and then they come on TV saying, “Oh, isn’t this awful?” I said, “I can’t see any difference between the shutout over there and the shutout in the industry.” I got a call from a CBS affiliate in Atlanta and they said, “Boy, did you embarrass us today with that speech!” One of them said, “Well, we really hadn’t even noticed, but now we want to fix the problem.” I thought they were going to ask me to recommend somebody they thought would be good to help break the color barrier. I said, “Do you have someone in mind?” They said, “Oh, yeah.” I said, “Who is it?” They said, “You!” I said, “Me?” They said, “Yes, we like the way you handle [race relations].”

Why don’t we hear more about the contributions that women made to the Civil Rights Movement?
Women were seen and not heard. You don’t talk about them. You learn how to just do the job without looking for the credit. You get conditioned to that because that’s just the way it is. There weren’t times when we felt sorry for ourselves like, “We’re women and they’re mistreating us,” because it was universal. All women were having the same positioning that you were seen and not heard. It wasn’t until we had some samplings of a women’s movement when women said, “Me too. I’ve got talent and I’ve been doing this. Why not give me recognition for it?” There was a yearning and a period in America when women decided to start speaking out. But prior to that, we just all did what had to be done and did not worry whether we got the credit or not.

This story is a part of VICE's ongoing effort to highlight the contributions of black women around the globe who are making a difference. To read more stories about strong black women making history today, go here.

Sign up for our newsletter to get the best of VICE delivered to your inbox daily

Follow Alexis on Twitter.

This article originally appeared on VICE US.

Michael Roders remembers the first time his grandfather showed him what was in the box. He was 11 or 12 at the time, and already knew that his mom's father was obsessed with Nazis—his home in Cleveland, Ohio, was covered in newspaper clippings of local guys who had been outed as former sympathizers of the Third Reich. But while Roders had already been regaled with stories about how his relative had fought in World War II and taken out some of the evil fascists who'd killed their extended family members, he never knew that there were trophies to prove it.

One day, during an extended summer visit, his grandfather popped open the cardboard container hidden in the back of a closet. Inside was a helmet, a pistol, and a handful of knives engraved with Swastikas—including one that was child's sized, presumably for Hitler Youth. If that wasn't terrifying enough for a pre-teen, there was also a red Nazi flag that unfurled to be about eight-feet-long. "I guess he figured I was old enough to see if then," the 28-year-old recently told me. "I have the feeling that he wanted it to become a family heirloom—that he was trying to share a piece of his history, and of world history."

As he grew older, Roders forgot about the box. He moved to Ocala, Florida, when he was 13, and later, about 40 miles north of that to attend the state's flagship university, where he became my friend, and eventually my roommate. The memorabilia lived in an attic long after the grandfather passed away, and Roders almost forgot it existed until this year, when he got a phone call from his mom asking for help. She was planning a move and needed help figuring out how to appraise and sell the artifacts online. Roders quickly found that while Ebay banned the sale of Nazi artifacts from their site in 2001, partially because there are some countries in which such material is illegal to possess, there are less popular alternatives like LiveAuctioners, where this stuff seems readily available for purchase. He thought nothing of this research until his girlfriend asked, "Won't she just be selling them to a neo-Nazi?"

Randy Cohen, who's best known for tackling all kinds of ethical conundrums for the New York Times Magazine from 1999 to 2011, pondered whether it was ethical to trade in Nazi materials well before Roders did. In a 2014 episode of his podcast, "Person, Place, Thing," the author Jean Hanff Korelitz spoke about owning daggers and a whip that a relative brought back from the war and gave to her father. While she said that touching them was a nauseating experience, she presented the alternative as possibly worse. "There are people out there who want these things, but they're the very people you would not want to have them," as she put it. At a time when Nazis are running for Congress and gloating about murdering college students, the question of what to do with swastika-emblazoned heirlooms is especially relevant to the millennial members of aging families.

Cohen told Korelitz that throwing out the artifacts would amount to "a cleansing of history," and suggested finding someone who might want it for its historical value. But as it turns out, that's easier said than done, as I found upon calling several museums to ask if they'd be willing to take what my friend's mom wanted to get rid of. Curators at both the Museum of Jewish Heritage and the World War II Museum in New Orleans both said that they were very specific on the items they accept—both specified no knives, for instance.

Jay Lockenour is a professor at Temple University who teaches modern German history and also happens to be my uncle. He explained to me that like museum curators, academics such as himself have little interest in collecting what he and his peers call "bad objects." Though he confesses to having a couple of medals a mentor gave him tucked into a drawer, he's not exactly looking for more stuff to fill his house with. As he put it: "What would I do with such an item? Hang it on my wall? Wear it?"

In his opinion, people's "fascination [with these objects] is usually based on a completely false notion that somehow the Wehrmacht [the German army] had remained 'clean' and not participated in the atrocities of the war or the Holocaust," he told me. "That idea is a complete myth and is thoroughly debunked by historians."

So museums are overloaded with the stuff, and mainstream historians don't necessarily want it, either. "The market for such items has always primarily been with military collectors," offered Gary Piattoni, an appraiser for Antiques Roadshow. "I have not personally seen great interest from extreme right groups in these relics. They make their own flags, and may have cheap copies of posters and other regalia, but few in my experience seek out the real thing."

But given the recent resurgence of white nationalism in America, the fact that cultural artifacts are playing a sizable role in its continued spread, its worth asking whether the fact these items go "primarily" to military collectors is enough. In fact, Michael Buckley, an associate professor at Lehman College, was planning to ask his political philosophy class about a similar rhetorical situation the day I hit him up to ask about what Roders should do. He eventually concluded it wasn't a risk worth taking.

"Neo-Nazis don't sit quietly in their basements admiring the historical significance of Nazi paraphernalia, nor do they use them to honor the memory of those gassed by the Nazi regime," he told me. "Instead, they use them to foment racism among their friends, or to promote hate, or to sow the seeds of division between communities."

Ultimately, a local pawn shop referred Roders's mom to an individual buyer they thought might be interested. Though her children were frightened by the prospect of a stranger showing up at their 59-year-old mother's house, she was game for it. In the end, she was only upset about getting low-balled. The dude who showed up apparently offered about $110 for both the flag and the gun. And while my friend's mom told me the man very well may have been a neo-Nazi, having the World War II artifacts in her attic constituted less of an ethical problem for her than a pain in the ass.

"I've been through a lot in my life," she said. "I wasn't scared, and my family was all killed in the pogroms, because they were Jewish. But I don’t care if you’re a Nazi, so long as you have enough money. I'm not a Nazi, and that's why I just want to get this shit out my house."

Follow Allie Conti on Twitter.

This article originally appeared on VICE US.

In 1964, as the Civil Rights Movement began to crest and Congress moved to pass historic laws addressing systemic racism, Martin Luther King, Jr. was one of the most beloved political leaders in America. That put a target on his back. And according to a new book from the duo who previously dug into conspiracy theories surrounding the American icon's eventual murder, it was around this time that the Mississippi White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan put out a contract hit on Dr. King.

The only problem? Despite the ambitions of their leader, Samuel Bowers, the white terrorist group couldn't come up with $13,000.

In their new book, Killing King: Racial Terrorists, James Earl Ray, and the Plot to Assassinate Martin Luther King, Jr., out this week to commemorate the 50th Anniversary of King’s death, investigative researchers Stuart Wexler and Larry Hancock describe a tangled web of plots behind MLK’s murder, one they argue dated back to the late 1950s. Among other things, they allege the FBI failed to pursue leads before and after that crime that would have suggested the eventually-convicted assassin, James Earl Ray, was far from a lone wolf.

VICE talked to the authors by phone to find out why they felt the need to dig deeper into the assassination, how groups and so-called movements with names like the Dixie Mafia, Christian Identity, and the White Knights were involved, and whether the white supremacist moment we're in right now really parallels that of 1968.

VICE: Besides the anniversary marker, why probe a crime that’s seemingly pretty cut-and-dried?
Stuart Wexler: About 12 years ago, I was helping Larry do some research related to Bobby Kennedy's assassination and we started coming up with this fascinating angle involving an individual associated with the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan of Mississippi. The allegations that connected these people to the Robert Kennedy assassination seemed groundless, but looking deeper there seemed to be a potential connection to the King assassination. We sort of ventured forth to see if this would actually lead somewhere—and it did very much lead somewhere.

One thing that comes across plainly in the book is that this wasn’t a suddenly successful plot in '68—organized racists had been after King’s blood for a decade or longer, right?
Stuart Wexler: There were several bounties that were circulating throughout the country and especially within the prison system. Initially, the bounty that we focused most of our time on started out as a bounty that was fronted to a group called the Dixie Mafia by the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan of Mississippi. The bounties start rather small in the late 1950s but they go up from $10,000 to $25,000 to $50,000 to $100,000 by the time you hit '67 and '68. All these bounties and assassination plots against King were all one to two steps removed from each other. The common thread that connected them together was this really radical version of racist Christianity called Christian Identity.

How did James Earl Ray—the man actually convicted of the murder, who investigators tend to agree actually carried out it out—get involved in the plot? Was he motivated chiefly by money or racial animus?
Larry Hancock: It's very clear from Ray's history that he didn't necessarily like black people, but he was never motivated to even go so far as to join a racist group or to be involved in anything overtly racist. What you see in his career is a series of criminal acts like burglary and armed robbery that landed him in jail, but as soon as he managed to get out of jail he'd go back to doing the same thing. It was all about money for Ray. After he escaped prison the last time, he tried to leave the country and go overseas. First through Canada and when that didn't work out he tried through Mexico. Ultimately, he ended up back in Los Angeles, running out of money. The people involved with this plot were aware of him. They had known him when he was in prison. They finally made contact with him and brought him into the plot.

One character who stands out here was Reverend Wesley Swift, the leader of Christian Identity crowd. Who would you compare him to in the annals of American life?
Stuart Wexler: Thanks in part to Henry Ford and the Dearborn Independent, [this ideology] was sort of cemented after World War II, and it basically said that Jews and people of color were not really human beings worthy of Christian consideration. In fact, they were Satanic, the tools of Satan, and were part of a cosmic conspiracy against white Christians.

The person who made this popular was Wesley Swift: a very charismatic west-coast minister who was a combination of Rush Limbaugh and Father Coughlin. He had an enormously popular radio show that espoused Christian Identity beliefs that circulated in an informal social network of these racist radicals across the country. A big part of what he was talking about was that the end of times was coming. For the Christian Identity folks, the end of times is a race war. His followers were trying to make that race war happen.

Along with Swift’s Identity crowd and Bowers’s White Knights, there was at least one more, wackier sect in play here, right?
Larry Hancock: The White Knights of Mississippi, Samuel Bowers’ folks, had been involved with people from the Dixie Mafia for a number of years. They used them to obtain weapons and would contract bombings from Dixie Mafia folks. They'd had those kind of connections for a number of years, but in 1964 that they ramped it up with a contract to kill Dr. King. The Dixie Mafia was only a mafia to the extent that they were a social and criminal social network that would farm jobs out to each other. If for some reason they weren't available, they had contact points where they could actually circulate the jobs and get a percentage or get the next job on the table. The White Knights worked with Dixie Mafia figures for of years. That shows up in the FBI files.

One thread here is your argument that the FBI uncovered leads that established the conspiracy, but failed to pursue them. Could they really have stopped this, though?
Stuart Wexler: The FBI gets a tip in the summer of 1967 from a former prisoner, Donald Nissen, about a bounty offer on Martin Luther King's life. The FBI might not have had access to the same kind of data mining that we have access to now, but they should've at least asked some basic follow up questions that they did not ask. That’s a big problem. Remember that King's assassination created mass chaos in the country and the Attorney General came out with the party line that it was one lone nut, in part to try and pacify the county. Once they get their minds wrapped around the idea that it's James Earl Ray, it's only a matter of time before they start shutting down leads too.

They should've been giving serious follow up consideration to the person that we looked into, Donald Nissen, whose story was a pre-assassination story. They should have given it, not only more time pre-assassination, but they could have given it more time post-assassination. In the pre-assassination phase, they simply were at times quite frankly incompetent, and in the post-assassination phase there's quite a bit of pressure all around for them to close down conspiratorial angles and focus solely on Ray as the shooter.

How do you think the white supremacist moment we're in right now, with Trump and the Alt Right, compares to what went on back then in the late '60s?
Larry Hancock: What's happening now is an enabling thing. Whenever these folks are able to get broad attention, as we saw during the 1960s, more recruiting happened. In 1967, the White Knights recruited young people. They used these people basically as their terrorist foot soldiers. They were young, relatively naive, and easily manipulated. It was the groups of older, more experienced radicals who actually were able to recruit young people like this and send them out on major terror attacks.

I'm afraid that's exactly what we're seeing now. If you look at the connections of some of the recent church shootings and school shootings, you will find that these are young people who have been radicalized by the same sort of racist, nativist network that has the same footprint that it did back in the 1960s.

How alarmed are you at the current state of race relations in America?
Stuart Wexler: There’s this giant continuum of Klan violence from the time the Klan was formed in the later 19th Century until the present. Wesley Swift’s influence on white supremacy is so profound that it's now in the ether of what the white supremacist movement breathes. Specifically the focus on a race war. This wasn't something that you saw as part of the motivation for racial violence before the 1960s. But in 1968, that's what we believe motivated the people to kill King, and in 2016, virtually everybody who commits these racist acts, people like Dylann Roof, they're talking about race war. That's because Wesley Swift’s Christian Identity ideas, over a period of five decades, filtered into the white supremacist movement. Even the groups that say they're not Christian Identity or that broke away from Christian Identity, this notion of a race war is very profound.

Learn more about the duo's new book, out this week, here.

Follow Seth Ferranti on Twitter.

This article originally appeared on VICE US.

Public outcry over last summer’s violent white nationalist rally in Charlottesville was quickly followed by a series of bans targeting racists on the web. Prominent sites lost their domains while leading figures and channels were driven from social media. Months later, however, it’s clear that these bans haven’t had the desired effect.

Even in the best of circumstances, trying to keep content off the web is a lot like sweeping sand off a beach. The problem, however, goes deeper than that. Contemporary white nationalism is highly networked and lacks centralized organization. While that structure may make coordination more difficult, it also makes white nationalists incredibly hard to silence.

In the days following Charlottesville, the well-trafficked white nationalist site Daily Stormer was dropped by its domain hosts for publishing a grossly disparaging article about Heather Heyer, an activist killed by a white nationalist during the rally. Later that week, Cloudflare ceased its DDoS protection—a critical service for controversial websites—for the embattled site, forcing it to retreat to the so-called “dark web.”

Less than two weeks later, the two-decade-old forum Stormfront had its domain seized by its registrar, Network Solutions, LLC. The company’s decision was apparently made at the behest of the nonprofit Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, who claimed responsibility in a tweet proclaiming that “Stormfront is no more.”

Social media companies also joined in. Facebook and Reddit shut down white nationalist pages and subreddits they said promoted violence, while Twitter suspended accounts connected to the Daily Stormer. YouTube rolled out a new policy it had announced in June to put “offensive” videos in a “limited state” that inhibits sharing and prevents them from generating ad revenue.

Yet little came from these wide-reaching efforts. Almost immediately after being driven to the dark web, the Daily Stormer’s staff began circulating their content using the hashtag #samizdat, a reference to the networks which distributed banned material in the Soviet Union. Stormer material was also made available on a “parallel” site. The Daily Stormer has even managed to make its way back onto the regular web. It’s had to change domains frequently over the past few months, but it hasn’t been unavailable for more than a few days at a time.

Stormfront’s domain seizure initially appeared to hit the forum hard. However, it was quickly made apparent that the seizure didn’t actually prevent users from connecting to the site. A simple modification of a computer’s hosts file would enable access. White nationalists shared information on how to modify the file through various platforms, and even the Washington Times reported on the availability of this workaround. Within a month, all this became moot as Don Black, Stormfront’s owner, reasserted control over the domain. The site has remained accessible ever since.

The results of social media bans have been slightly more mixed. There is some evidence to suggest that an earlier removal of hateful subreddits actually did lead to a decline in racist rhetoric on Reddit. However, efforts to drive white nationalists from social media have simply enabled the growth of alternative platforms like Gab. Andrew Anglin, the Daily Stormer’s founder, established an active presence there after Charlottesville, attracting more than 10,000 followers. Twitter’s bans have also been less than effective. The Daily Stormer, in fact, published an article gloating over the persistent presence of and harassment by white nationalists on the platform. “No matter how many holes you poke at the bottom of a bucket, it’ll never get dry while it’s standing underneath a waterfall,” the Stormer declared. “And yes, the waterfall here is groyper [an alt-right meme] Nazism.”

I want to be clear: I’m not talking about the moral or ethical dimensions of prohibiting white nationalist speech. There is no moral equivalency between white nationalists and those who oppose them. The goal of white nationalism is to establish ethnically “pure” societies where rights will be denied to anyone—people of colour, women, LGBT people, leftists and progressives—who doesn’t match the ideal “racial type.” White nationalist speech, then, is aimed at denying rights to large swathes of our plural societies.

But when it comes to combatting this rhetoric, we need to consider the practical dimensions of banning white nationalist speech. In practical terms, those efforts have largely been a failure. Not because we didn’t try hard enough, but rather because the structure of white nationalist activism makes prohibition effectively impossible.

Roger Griffin, a scholar who studies the racist right, pointed out in a 2010 paper that contemporary white nationalist movements are “groupuscular,” meaning that they’re a mass of small groups connected through a dense network of relationships. In the age of digital communication and social media, many of these groups are not traditional political organizations but digital platforms with overlapping user bases. Shut down one site and its users migrate to another. Staff at the banned site can also use the network to distribute content to users, or inform them when that site reemerges at a new address, as with the Daily Stormer. Because these sites and groups aren’t centrally organized, singular bans do little to actually disrupt the larger network. Nor do they prevent new sites from popping up. As a result, Griffin suggested, the collective white nationalist movement “has actually achieved an invulnerability to attempts by democracies to destroy it.”

We are not, in other words, going to be able to ban our way to a world free of white nationalism.

What, then, can be done? The truth is, there is likely not a simple solution to the problem of racist rhetoric, in no small part because the staying power of white nationalist worldviews is not attributable to speech alone.

In a 1974 book about 19th-century German nationalists, historian Fritz Stern noted that the ideas of these movements “had some basis in reality.” They were responding to serious upheavals caused by the arrival of industrial capitalism and modernity to Germany during that period. Ecological devastation, the displacement of traditional ways of living, and the explosion of urban populations living and working in abhorrent conditions all factored into their denunciations of modern life. That turmoil lent weight to their ideas and helped them resonate in ways they probably wouldn’t have otherwise.

The figures studied by Stern influenced key figures in contemporary white nationalism, a fact which should lead us to ask why their ideas continue to have such staying power more than a century later. Are similar issues of social turmoil—from reduced opportunities for young people to the seemingly endless “war on terror”—lending weight to white nationalist rhetoric? This is a wide-ranging question, and one that can’t be adequately addressed here. Still, it’s important to ask it, and to see where it leads us. Asking a question like this, of course, doesn’t excuse racist beliefs, but it may help us better understand them. And that understanding has the potential to carry us a lot further towards effectively addressing a resurgent white nationalism than simple speech prohibition.

Sign up for our newsletter to get the best of VICE delivered to your inbox daily.

Kevan A. Feshami is a PhD candidate at the University of Colorado Boulder, where he studies white nationalist history and activism.

This article originally appeared on VICE US.

At this point, there's no shortage of information on how deeply screwed millennials are, financially speaking. Studies have shown an increase in millennials forced to move back in with their parents, a majority unable to save anything for retirement, and earning significantly less than the baby boomers did early in their careers.

Now the latest depressing poll from NBC News/GenForward reveals how those financial troubles are stalling some of life's basic milestones for millennials. With an overwhelming majority of millennials (62 percent) owing more in debt than they currently have in savings, many young adults are holding off on getting married or having kids. According to the poll, 16 percent of 18- to-34-year-olds said they had delayed starting a family because of debt, while 14 percent said debt had forced them to put off marriage.

Crushing debt is also stopping young people from reaching the big, conventional economic milestones capitalism expects of us: 34 percent have delayed buying a house; 31 percent have deferred saving for retirement; 29 percent have postponed buying a car.

The full findings lay bare the generation's staggering debt burden. While 76 percent of millennials owe money in some form, 55 percent struggle with debts over $5,000. Meanwhile, only 23 percent of millennials say they have $5,000 or more in their savings account.

The huge costs of college can explain some of this mess. Surprisingly, however, the survey showed credit card debt is even more widespread than student loan debt, with 46 percent of millennials currently paying off credit cards and only 36 percent paying off college. The racial component is also distressing. Young African Americans are the most likely to have no personal savings, and have more student loan debt than any other group. Similarly, more African Americans (72 percent) said they would struggle to pay an unexpected bill more than any other group.

Perhaps the weirdest, saddest part of today’s survey is the presumption millennials are currently having to “delay” commonly agreed life goals, as if debt is just a temporary blip and we’ll all get there in the end. At least most are staying optimistic: 58 percent responded that with a good job, they'll be able to pay off their debt and "afford the lifestyle they want."

Sign up for our newsletter to get the best of VICE delivered to your inbox daily.

Follow Adam Forrest on Twitter.

This article originally appeared on VICE US.

Sometimes there are videos on the internet that you watch not once, not twice, but hundreds of times.

They’re typically short—no one is ever going to watch a minute-and-a-half video more than twice—and dramatic as all hell. These are the videos that drove Vine’s popularity, and even though Vine is now dead, the churn of bite-sized videos never stopped. A new one popped up on the internet today and it’s taken over my goddamn mind.

The video is ever-so-brief—ten seconds for the original on Facebook (though the CBC edited that shit down to seven for their mesmerizing, looping tweet). It’s set in Quebec and features a semi truck that has forgotten to take down its trailer running full speed into an overpass, which causes the trailer to explode, showering grain across the entire highway. (A quick note that, while the highway was shut down by the crash, no one was hurt.)

As I’ve written about before, I’m a very simple man and I like very simple things, which may be why this video compels me so much. Like the videos of incredibly powerful presses compacting things and those weird grinder machines that destroy everything, this video is just so goddamn satisfying.

So let’s break this down, shall we? (For this article we will be using the ten-second director’s cut posted to Facebook, which you can watch below.)

One second in:

Oh man, look at this goofy trucker, he’s ripping at a good speed without lowering his trailer. What a silly goose.

One and a half seconds in:

Oh fuck me, there is an overpass coming up right quick on his ass. He better slow himself down.

Two seconds in:

He’s not slowing down. JESUS CHRIST HE IS NOT SLOWING DOWN.

Two and a half seconds in:

The front end of the truck has gone under the bridge. Impact is imminent. This is bad.

Also, there is a turn-off coming up. I hope buddy filming this didn’t miss his exit.

Three seconds in:

HERE WE GO!!!

With the truck going full speed the trailer smashes into the overpass and chaos happens. If you watch it in at regular speed like a normal human it seems to just disintegrate. However, if you’re like me, you slow that shit down. Going frame-by-frame we can see the top of the trailer starts to peel off like a sardine can and there’s suddenly more canola than air. The entire top of the trailer is sheared off and goes pretty much vertical.

Sadly, at this point, the camera cuts away from the carnage and we can’t tell what happens next.

Five seconds in:

The camera continues swinging and we’re now shown the scene from the windshield instead of the driver’s side seat. From this new angle, we see that the canola has engulfed the bridge like a wave of sweet, sweet grain.

Seven seconds in:

The vehicle filming the accident passes under the Overpass of Destruction and it starts fucking raining grain. Seriously, if you look closely you see that it’s lucky buddy had his wipers going for some snow because his windshield starts to get covered in canola.

Eight to ten seconds in:

You can hear the sounds of a thousand pieces of grain pouring down on the windshield. The vehicle filming carries on its merry way and we, the viewers, get to sit back and relax in the same way you do after good sex.

You get this relaxation for about one second before that shit starts looping and you do this journey once more. (It’s not an exaggeration to say that I’ve watched this video a hundred times or so in the few hours it’s been online.)

The thing about this video that I find so riveting is I know how straight-up dangerous it is. About ten years ago in Edmonton, Alberta, I was traveling on a highway on the way to my family’s farm when a gravel truck that hadn’t lowered its guard slammed into an overpass. This caused the semi to jackknife, rip away from its trailer, and careen through the opposite lanes of traffic. I saw it at the last minute as the trucker veered it to the small space between myself and the car in front of me. I missed slamming into him by inches and he clipped the car in front of me—the cops who came to the scene said it was a miracle no one died.

It was hands-down one of the scariest things to ever happen to me.

This video, which I can’t stop gawking at, isn’t far off from what I experienced all those years ago. And yet I obviously don’t watch it for the purpose of reliving that trauma. I watch over and over again because it’s one of the most classic sight gags of all time—up there with a guy getting hit in the nuts with a football.

I don’t know why something so dangerous can double as high physical humour, and I don’t plan on figuring that out anytime soon. The only thing I do know is I'm going to watch this video at least a hundred more times.

Follow Mack Lamoureux on Twitter.

Ever since a certain reality television star began his campaign to become president of the US, the word ‘cuckold’ resurfaced in a very odd and unavoidable way. In case you have somehow missed the last several years of right-wing discourse, the so-called alt-right use ‘cuck’ to imply liberal subservience to a culture of political correctness. This, of course, is a misappropriation of the full version of the word, which is apparently derived from the name of the cuckoo bird. Some female cuckoos change male partners and lay their eggs in other nests—a humiliating act of betrayal (insofar as birds can actually feel humiliated). This is somewhat analogous to the situation of a man who has unknowingly been cheated on by a woman. Hence the word ‘cuckold.’

Historically, being a cuckold indicated unwitting marriage to an adulterous woman—undesirable, by all accounts. But sexual appetites change. A quick search on your porn website of choice will reveals a wealth of cuckold-inspired videos, from amateur hotel liaisons to professional content. With millions of views on the major online porn players and year-on-year increases in Google hits, the cuckold fantasy is indeed alive and well. Cuckolding generally involves a man (the ‘cuckold’) watching his significant other (the ‘hotwife’) fuck someone else (the ‘bull’), often while the cuckold is humiliated (e.g. being told that his dick is unsatisfactory).

This can happen in real-life or as pure masturbatory fantasy. David Ley, a sex therapist and author of the cuckold ethnography Insatiable Wives, has suggested a number of reasons for why men encourage their partners into unfamiliar bedrooms. These include a desire for their partner to be sexually satisfied, a sense of empowering women, the thrill of the taboo and a culture of pornified voyeurism. For men with masochistic preferences, the desire for denial and humiliation may also lead towards cuckolding. As Ley recently put it to CNN: “Our erotic imaginations have the ability to turn shame lemons into delicious kink lemonade.”

Cuckolding appears to be a primarily male fantasy, although theories for why this is the case are a bit thin on the ground. Ley has proposed that men may feel that they have better social status if their partner is judged as sexually desirable by other men. He has also referred to the ‘sperm competition’ theory—the lab-tested idea that if a man watches another man shagging his loved one, his body is biologically primed to produce larger amounts of more effective sperm. Why? So that his sperm wins the ‘competition’ to impregnate a lover.

Regardless of a man’s motivation for cuckolding, expert opinion suggests that it’s a largely positive experience for couples that engage in it. Dr. Justin Lehmiller, a research fellow at The Kinsey Institute and author of the forthcoming book Tell Me What You Want, explains that “most people who are aroused by cuckolding tend to enjoy their fantasies and, of those who have shared and/or acted on their cuckolding desires, the vast majority report positive outcomes.” This is echoed by sex therapist Holly Richmond, who is keen to emphasise that the cuckold fantasy isn’t problematic in and of itself. “There’s nothing weird, abnormal or wrong about engaging with this fantasy cognitively and emotionally, or even taking the fantasy into real life.”

That said, there are some cases where the aforementioned kink lemonade may turn decidedly sour. It’s easy enough to find Reddit regret threads about women leaving their partners after being encouraged into the cuckold lifestyle. This one begins with the story of a man who asked his reluctant girlfriend to join a swinging website. This soon led to a few real-life cuckolding hook-ups, before she ghosted the guy entirely. Another man responded with his experiences of having been left twice by his wife after she took a liking to two of their bulls. Apparently, they’re still together only because they have kids and he can’t give up his cuckolding. Both of these tales initially involved two willing partners. But, as Richmond tells me, relationships can also falter if only one person is sexually invested in the fantasy. “Problems arise, of course, when this isn’t part of their partner’s sexual template, meaning there is nothing arousing for them about this fantasy.”

This was certainly the case for one Reddit user, who described how eight years of cuckold fantasies eventually led to the end of an otherwise healthy relationship. “My only sexual outlet became fantasies about my girlfriend being fucked by a guy/group of guys,” he explained. “Eventually this turned into frustration and I stopped wanting to have sex with her at all.” He felt increasingly alienated from his masculinity and ability to give sexual pleasure, because he was mostly fantasizing about being a passive observer rather than an active participant. “For the record; I am not against playing with this fetish,” he wrote. “But I call it the heroin of fetishes—it has a potential to completely wipe out your whole sexuality and reduce it to replaying this one small fetish scenario over and over.”

This guy isn’t alone in his negative cuckolding experiences. Mac* is a 39-year-old American man who has struggled with the cuckold fantasy for seven years. He experiences low self-esteem and believes that this, alongside a dying sexual spark in his long-term relationship, contributed to him fantasizing about his partner’s infidelity. “My SO has also never been with anyone else, so there's something taboo and hot about her losing control and giving into her basic sexual instincts,” he says. As Mac became more and more fixated on the idea of watching his lover sleep with other men, he began to obsessively think of different ways to make it a reality. “I started thinking about it at work, planning what I would say or do when I got home to get my SO into it.”

Mac’s girlfriend occasionally played along with him, but also expressed her distaste for the idea. Richmond says that it’s common for partners to view the fantasy through an emotional lens, which can lead to negative feelings.

“Women in this position often express that they feel their partners should get jealous, and want to keep them away from other men and to themselves, like in a traditional monogamous relationship,” she explains. “This gets translated into feeling unloved or unwanted.” Richmond suggests that couples in this situation should try to talk about the origins of the fantasy under the guidance of a therapist. Obviously, this isn’t financially possible for everyone. Either way, Richmond tells me that it’s useful to put rules and boundaries in place that make each person feel heard, safe and supported within the framework of the relationship.

For some couples, this leads to pursuing the cuckold fantasy in real life; for others, it leads to occasional role-play. After having a chat with his significant other, Mac realized that he’d become obsessed by his own sexual feelings and was no longer focused on pleasing his lover. Mac prioritized their romantic connection and agreed to no longer bring his fantasy into the bedroom.

The above story is familiar to 28-year-old Amber*, whose former boyfriend told her about his hotwifing fetish early on in their relationship. “It made me uncomfortable, but I also didn't want to be negative about his kinks,” she says. Amber considers herself a pretty kinky person who is open and sex-positive, but found that her boyfriend was solely focused on his own sexual needs. “He started whispering to me that it would be so hot for me to bone other guys, or go to a glory hole,” she recalls. “He also had a ‘bimbo’ kink that seems to often go along with the hotwife thing, where he'd tell me I needed to dye my hair or get implants, to the end of looking ‘fuckable.’”

Initially, Amber role-played with him, even though she didn’t really enjoy it. “The more I tried to appease his fetish, the less interested he seemed in actual sex with me,” she says. At her boyfriend’s behest, Amber tried a solution that would seemingly satisfy them both. She started to have multiple sexual partners—all of whom were aware of her relationship status—and would tell her boyfriend about her escapades. This proved to be a lightbulb moment in what was becoming an increasingly toxic relationship. “They made me realize that I wasn't getting my needs met by my actual boyfriend, despite going beyond what I was initially comfortable with for his sake, and that I was having better sex with near strangers.”

While Mac recognized his partner’s displeasure with the cuckold fantasy and eventually discussed it with her, Amber’s attempts to talk to her boyfriend were repeatedly shunned. Communication and mutual enjoyment are the bedrocks to any relationship and Richmond points out that this is especially important when it comes to fetishes and fantasies: “What turns us on is what turns us on, end of story, as long as it’s consensual and pleasurable.” Through listening to his partner and acknowledging her concerns, Mac has started to overcome his difficulties. He detoxed from sex and porn for around a month and planned dates with no sexual strings attached. Concurrently, he got into healthy eating and hitting the gym. “I really worked on improving myself and my relationship with my SO,” he explains. “I'm not fully ‘recovered’ yet, but I'm working on it.”

Unfortunately for Amber, her boyfriend was never prepared to listen. She realized that he wasn’t willing to change, at least not for her, and broke off the relationship. Amber believes that cuckolding is distinct from other fantasies because it directly eroticizes the relationship itself, rather than body parts or objects that are obtainable within or outside of coupledom. “I think that's why a lot of these men do ultimately try to include it in the bedroom,” she suggests. “To varying degrees, the actual relationship between them and their partner has the potential to be turned into a stream of sexual gratification.”

Ultimately, Amber had a negative experience with hotwifing that caused significant emotional hurt. She’s very clear on her advice to men interested in the cuckold fantasy: “I'd encourage men who have these types of fantasies to be self-aware about how they sexually interact with their partner, so that they ensure pleasure is mutual and that she's not being bombarded or suffocated by this fetish,” she says. “To be mindful that they're treating their partner as a person first and foremost, rather than an object that can provide sexual gratification.”

*Names have been changed to protect anonymity.

Follow Richard on Twitter.

One of the biggest fears people who are struggling with alcohol or other drugs tend to have is that they will be doomed to a deadening, conformist life in recovery. Especially for artists, writers or musicians, anxiety looms about losing their creative edge.

Leslie Jamison knows all about it.

Now 34, the author of the bestselling The Empathy Exams is over seven years sober. As another journalist who has also written obsessively about both addiction and empathy, I was eager to interview her after reading her new book, The Recovering: Intoxication and Its Aftermath.

Jamison and I spoke as her three-month-old daughter slept on her chest, comparing notes on the tricky narratives that tend to define addiction and recovery in America. In the face of the overdose crisis, questions about the nature of addiction that could otherwise seem academic can actually be matters of life and death.

VICE: Where do you think the roots of your addiction lie?
Leslie Jamison: I tend to think about my life in general [by] considering multiple narratives and multiple explanations for how things come to be without necessarily settling on one to the exclusion of the other.

I really try to enact that process structurally in the book too.... "Well, you can tell the story of where I initially came from like this or like this or like this, and probably all of those explanations hold some truth, but none of them hold the whole truth."

I certainly think there’s a genetic component to where my addiction comes from—look at my family tree and it’s full of diagnosed and undiagnosed mental illness.

Your aunt is Kay Redfield Jamison, author of An Unquiet Mind, which deals with her bipolar disorder—and she’s a widely respected authority on the condition.
Yeah. There’s quite a bit of that on that side of the family. I think certainly one place [my addiction] comes from is a physiological place in terms of how I experienced, like, where the desire came from and where that feeling of dependence came from.

So much of it for me came back to a sense of kind of gut-level insecurity, and I mean that constant self-evaluation, self-interrogation—like, every single thing, every single thought that would come into my mind. I would ask myself over and over again, "Is this worth saying? Is this something other people are going to like?"

[Or] "How are you going to earn your presence in this relationship? How are you going to earn your presence in the world?" The right to exist being something that you have to earn rather than just something that you had was a really bone-level anxiety for me.

You had to be smart enough and good enough and all this to be able to even just be okay…
I feel like there’s this deep connection between my relationship to success and my relationship to substances. I feel like they come from a really similar place in me.

By getting this next thing or just the constant anxiety about not being good enough—all of those anxieties were also why it felt so fucking good to use a drug, because it quieted all that chatter for periods of time.

Yeah. You had anorexia also, and I liked how you said that they’re coming from the same place. Many people don’t recognize that obsessive and compulsive behaviours like anorexia and OCD are often quite similar to addiction.
I always felt like the impulse to restrict was less like an expression of who I was and more like this rabid compensatory measure to try to cover up who I actually was.

Deep inside, [I] wanted to consume constantly everything, always, so the denial was just the way of fighting it rather than giving in to it. And in a way, I think [that’s] part of why 12-step recovery has been really important for me. [It] was so useful for me [by] giving me alternatives to the logic of indulgence, the logic of denial.

[An interesting thing] about how people have been responding to the book so far, is [that] everybody who’s thought seriously about addiction has a set of feelings about 12-step recovery.

I wanted to somehow write a book that was both, among other things, an ode to what 12-step recovery had been in my life, but also wasn’t just an un-interrogated account, nor meant to be a catch-all prescription for everybody else.

You write about this fear that you would not be able to write well in recovery, or that writing about recovery would just be dull. Where do you think that came from?
Part of it was that I had not only idolized certain drunk genius writers but, also, I had really always associated creativity with darkness and pain. Also, there was something about the kind of chaos and narrative substance of an addicted life that would lend itself to creativity. The more deeply I became enmeshed in my own dependent relationship to alcohol, the more disabused I became of that particular illusion.

I think that that sense that recovery was going to be boring personally comes from the canon of addiction memoirs in which, not exclusively, but often, the recovery part of the story is this perfunctory afterthought, after the real meat of what people bought the book for, which is the train-wreck.

[I wanted] to see if recovery could be as interesting a part of the story. Some of the issue comes down to some basic things about narrative, which is that [it] depends on trouble and problems.

There’s also a way that recovery stories seem to be forced into a basic sin and redemption tale.
It’s something that I have wrestled with. I actually find 12-step fellowship to be a space where there’s room for very different narratives to be true at once.

[If you have] a room full of people who are each around to just speak the truth of what happened to them, you end up seeing that addiction did play out in pretty radically different ways, and I think that that means there’s room again to not be expected or expect yourself to identify with everything, or force stories to be exactly the same thing.

What I try to push against is this homogenizing 12 step idea of “yets.” You know, "You haven’t killed your grandmother yet," or all people with addiction are selfish, evil creatures who would do anything horrible at any time, when they take drugs—and if you haven’t done something awful “yet,” you will if you relapse. It’s just not true. How do you avoid that?
I think for certain people, there’s something quite useful about a kind of hard line, like I haven’t killed my grandmother yet. You know what I mean?

Part of what ends up feeling permissive about fellowship is that you can find the people who talk about what addiction was in their life in a way that feels useful and relevant and resonant and not actually have to have the way that every single person talks about it feel like the model that you want to pick up.

There is something nice about, "We’re all human, we’re all sinners, we all haven’t killed our grandmother yet"— it’s extremely inclusive. But at the same time, it’s also saying, well, we’re all sociopaths, which is not nice at all.
I believe in myself as deeply contingent. I actually don’t fully know what I’m even capable of, and it’s not that I think I could kill my grandmother, but it’s kind of like I wish everybody went around the world with a little bit [more of the feeling that these kinds of things are possible for many people in the wrong circumstances].

That is radical empathy.
[And] if there’s some way of allowing for contingency and a certain kind of empathetic attention to take [this idea] in that direction rather than that moralizing, turning all addicts into these sort of like character-flawed, deviant people.

For me, I much more want to think about everybody is capable of anything, and in that way, it’s connected to something else that I’ve thought about 12-step recovery, which is it’s less that I think like: Oh, addicts are the only people who have a dangerous relationship to anger [or] selfishness. [Instead], I think that probably every single person could benefit from [the program].

Yeah, it’s just when it is presented as “these are specific bad characteristics of people with addiction” and “this is the treatment for addiction” that I have a problem with it. Another thing I find really dangerous is this narrative of “hitting bottom” because it’s used to justify all kinds of horrible treatment.
Yeah, the idea that a punishment becomes part of somebody’s bottom [and] that’s going to inspire them to get sober—that was one of the things that made so much sense to me about your book [Unbroken Brain] and made me want to foist [it] on everyone in America. It’s one of the hallmark characteristics of addiction, [that] immunity to negative consequences. [So] how would it ever, ever, ever be effective to just keep [punishing people]?

And again, that gets to empathizing with the experience of people with addiction
I do feel like one of the great struggles of my life has been the struggle with and against self-obsession, and again, I say that less in a self-lacerating way—it’s probably one of everybody’s huge struggles. In that sense, this obsession with empathy is trying to reckon with that, like what is the alternative to self-obsession?

What is the way out, or what are the ways by which we can like engage with other people’s lives? And certainly recovery is one structured way of engaging with other people’s lives. [12 step] is only one way to do that, but I think one of the things that is beautiful about it is this very primal proposition that you might show up in a room and listen to other people for an hour, and you can do that in any number of frameworks, and it would probably be really useful.

This interview has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity. Learn more about Jamison's book, out this week, here.

Sign up for our newsletter to get the best of VICE delivered to your inbox daily.

Follow Maia Szalavitz on Twitter.

This article originally appeared on VICE US.

Juli Briskman, the cyclist who was fired after a photo of her flipping off Trump's motorcade went viral, has filed a lawsuit against her former employer, the Washington Post reports.

Last October, Briskman was biking back to her home in Sterling, Virginia, when Trump's presidential motorcade sped past her on its way from Trump National Golf Course in DC. Recognizing the unique opportunity she was in, Briskman decided to let Trump know exactly how she felt about his presidency—by flipping him the bird.

What she didn't know is that a Getty photographer was also in the motorcade, and captured Briskman's one-finger salute in a photo that quickly blew up online. When Briskman realized that her tiny moment of rebellion had become an internet sensation, she figured it'd be best to let her work know about it. Unfortunately, her bosses at Akima LLC, a government contractor, weren't particularly pleased about their employee's newfound viral fame, and she was fired.

Now, Briskman is suing Akima for allegedly violating Virginia law by forcing her to resign out of fear that the photo would put their governmental contracts at risk.

"Working for a company that does business with the federal government should provide you with greater opportunities, but it should never limit your ability to criticize that government in your private time," Briskman said in a statement. "The actions of my company were swift and unexpected. It is un-American to let the government use your own tax dollars to buy your off-duty obedience."

Briskman's suit argues that Virginia law and the First Amendment give her the right to flip off the president, and she is seeking a total of $2,692.30 from Akima to reimburse her for legal fees and finally give her the long-overdue severance Akima allegedly promised when she was let go.

That's a pretty small sum of money, especially since Briskman wound up with over $100,000 thanks to a GoFundMe established in her name. But it's not really about the cash. It's about being able to waggle your middle finger at Trump whenever you get the chance without having to stress about losing your job along the way.

Sign up for our newsletter to get the best of VICE delivered to your inbox daily.

Follow VICE on Twitter.

This article originally appeared on VICE US.

Some beautiful bastards in Quebec made off with half a million bones worth of beer, pepperoni and beef jerky last month and the coppers have warned the brilliants bandits may be selling it back to corner stores.

This includes nearly 20,000 cases of Grolsch beer while the pep and jerky were of the Jack Link’s variety—police say the street value of the booze and snacks is $500,000.

The Canadian Press reports that the heist, which was done by multiple subjects, occured in Boucherville—a southern suburb of Montreal—on March 12. The thieves were apparently more sophisticated than the typical beer and jerky bandit (ie: the Trailer Park Boys) as they apparently disabled the alarm and surveillance cameras during their heist.

To make matters worse for the company, when the thieves were pulling off their plan they filled up three delivery trucks at the warehouse and used them to get off with their booze and pepperoni. The trucks were eventually found but the beer and pep never was.

So, if this hilarious little crime caper happened almost a full month ago, why are we learning about this now, you ask?

Well, my fair reader, in a truly Trailer Park Boys turn of events the thieves have taken to selling their wares on the streets. Police are anticipating the crew to sell what they stole not to Joe Public but to stores and restaurants and are asking for these businesses to be wary of what they buy and to narc on the thieves.

But if they aren’t able to sell it, I mean, being stuck with half a million dollars worth of beer and pep isn’t the worst thing in the world. Grolsch may not be the best beer in the world, but after the first couple hundred cases I’m sure you get a taste for it.

Follow Mack Lamoureux on Twitter

On the last page of every issue of the New Yorker, there's a cartoon caption contest. The magazine prints an illustration that doesn't quite make sense, just like the ones peppered through its articles, and asks readers to submit funny captions. Then it prints the winners.

Unbeknownst to all those adult would-be comedians, however, a nine-year-old named Alice is sneakily slaughtering the competition with her hysterical, refreshingly simple cartoon captions. On Tuesday, TV writer Bess Kalb tweeted photos of her cousin's daughter's witticisms, and they're honestly too pure for this world. Take a look for yourself:

Screenshot via @bessbell

Screenshot via @bessbell

screenshot via @bessbell

screenshot via @bessbell

Alice proves that, for those of us who have tried to write good New Yorker cartoon captions, we've been doing it all wrong. We've been overthinking it, trying too hard to impress David Remnick or whoever. But Alice makes it seem so simple. Her directness, and her uncanny knack for noticing how characters are reacting to each other on the page, is spot-on. Like most kids, her genius lies in just telling it like it is.

screenshot via @bessbell.

And the nine-year-old's talent for caption writing is prodigious, apparently. Kalb tweeted that Alice tends to steal the New Yorker before her mom can read it for the express purpose of being the first to take a stab at the week's caption. But how she even has competition is beyond us.

screenshot via @bessbell

screenshot via @bessbell

screenshot via @bessbell

Like many great artists, Alice isn't out for fame. She just really, really loves captioning New Yorker cartoons. And at just nine years old, she's much better than most of the cynical writers out there. Hopefully she embraces that quality well into her years.

So thank you, Alice. The year 2018 may already feel like a never-ending case of the gumdrops, but your New Yorker cartoon captions remind us that things just might turn out okay there, buddy.

Sign up for our newsletter to get the best of VICE delivered to your inbox daily.

Ask Kara if she's okay there, buddy on Twitter.

This article originally appeared on VICE US.

This article originally appeared on VICE Japan.

Back when Ryo Kameyama was still in middle school he admired war photographers like Larry Burrows and Kyoichi Sawada so much that he took a part-time job washing the linens at a love hotel to save up enough money for his first camera. Both photographers had made a name for themselves with moving, personal images that showed the human cost of the Vietnam War.

Kameyama wanted to follow in their footsteps, and as soon as he had enough money to purchase a camera he hit the streets, documenting protests and student movements in his native Japan. He then went overseas, photographing conflicts in places as far flung as Colombia, Palestine, Angola, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Sudan, Congo, Somalia, and Burundi. He does this all as a freelancer journalist, often traveling to new hotspots across the globe without as much as an agreement from editors to run his work.

Hirohisa Asahara, from VICE's Tokyo office, sat down with Kameyama shortly before the publication of his book Senjō (Warzone) to talk about what keeps motivating him to return to conflict zones.

Ryo Kameyama poses at a field behind his house.

VICE: So a bookstore employee recently tweeted that your latest work contained too much elements of tragedy—that it was hard to directly look at the photos. How do you feel about that kind of response?
Ryo Kameyama: Readers might see the images that way. But it can't be helped. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, after all. But if a random right-wing person online tries to have a go at me, then my switch is surely going to be flipped in an instant.

I didn't feel like any of your photos deliberately cross the line or anything.
What do you mean?

Like, for example, photos of mangled corpses or something.
Maybe that's because I've never encountered such a scene. But I also don't think I could even photograph something like that. It's difficult to put into words, but it would be against my principles as a photographer. My current style of photographer is the byproduct of this constant push to avoid taking distasteful photos.

I think it's safe to say my work was inspired by Gilles Peress' seminal work on the Rwandan genocide, The Silence. He documented an undeniably tragic event, but for some reason there was also something profound in his photos that force you to look at and evaluate each image.

A lot of war photographers also shoot video, but you don't. Is there a reason behind your preference for shooting photos only?
Well, with movies, there is always pressure to do post-production and editing work. But with a photo you can opt to have the results straight out of the camera as your final product and then just be done with it. I personally swore off cropping images, so once I push the shutter, the whole photo process is done. If an image turns out poor, I can always just move on to the next one anyway.

At one point, people kept telling me that video would earn me more money. But that only spurred my rebellious streak and made me even more engrossed in photography, which was a good thing, I think, in retrospect. I do believe that video is a more convenient way to disseminate information—it just has so many more elements, like sound and movement. Photos have fewer elements, so it can be a tricky medium to work in. But it's also a powerful medium when everything comes together.

I heard that you've always been a freelancer.
No one commissions me to take a photo, so I can quit whenever I want. I'm free to do as I please since I tend to go out on location without any clear objective or publication targets. But it can get pretty lonely. [Laughs] One thing is for sure, staying in a conflict area can be an arduous undertaking. There is constant pressure from within myself to justify my presence in a conflict area by properly documenting the people and events I see along the way—otherwise, I am no different from a tourist.

It also hurts me, financially, if I can't exhibit my work, although I am aware that my photography doesn't make much sense from a commercial standpoint, especially since I made a premeditated decision to not go to places already heavily covered by the mainstream media.

People running away from Israeli Tanks raiding a town on the Gaza Strip, Palestine. 2001. From Ryo Kameyama’s book Senjō.

I keep going back, and I often find myself in tough situations, so I guess I'm rather adept at enduring working in conflict zones. I really have no tolerance for mundane things. I went through a series of blah jobs to cover my travel expenses— it was horrible. Then a stray bullet robbed me of my eyesight in my left eye while I was working in Palestine. The insurance money from that accident relieved me of my financial concerns for some time, so it's all good.

What sort of jobs were you doing before that accident?
Service-related jobs don't suit me, so it was mostly manual labor—usually construction jobs. Other than that, I've climbed steel poles to replace the netting at driving ranges, which paid me about JPT 12,000 ($112 USD) a day, I think. I prefer to take jobs that pay me daily, so I can work just enough to save what I need then quit. It's not as constraining as jobs that pay once a month.

How much do you usually save before heading abroad on a shoot?
It depends on the value of the Yen at the time, but it's typically around JPY 1 million ($9,340 USD). Although nowadays I get itchy way earlier and usually leave with only half that amount in my savings. I worked some demolition jobs before the Palestine shoot, but unfortunately, my tools were stolen from the Hanazono Shrine, in Shinjuku, while I was out getting drunk with this homeless man after work. That sort of robbed me of my motivation to work. Those tools were really expensive, and the thief took all of them.

I started showing up late to that job and my boss was furious. One day I called him up and told him my dog had died, so I wasn't coming in and that was that. I didn't really have that much saved up at the time so I couldn't say in Palestine for long and that put me in a foul mood the entire time.

You dog died?
No, I don't even have a pet.

Does your family ever tell you to stop this kind of work?
I don't think so. Everyone probably knows it will end in another heated argument. A few years after the stray bullet incident in Palestine, my father killed himself. My mother was upset. She asked me why I kept insisting that I had to go back to a conflict zone. I eventually came to the realization that I would probably go crazy if I stopped, so I pushed forward.

But I also made more efforts to stay in touch with my mom, whether it's via satellite phones, email, or the like. That really improved our relationship. Before my dad died, I barely kept in touch when I was overseas, aside from the odd email when I was in Columbia. It was a scary time there, so many people were getting abducted at the time.

Government soldiers getting drunk during a battle in Monrovia, Liberia. 2003. From Ryo Kameyama’s Senjō.

A child soldier smokes marijuana all day in Nimba county, Liberia. 2004. From Ryo Kameyama’s Senjō.

You've been taking photos since you were a teenager. Was there a turning point that convinced you to take up photography as a career?
The stray bullet in Palestine changed everything. Until that point, photography was just something I did while backpacking through Latin America. Maybe losing my eyesight in my left eye made me feel like I was somehow involved in the conflict myself? Before the accident, I would go back and forth between Japan and Palestine, but I felt bored because I couldn't find anything worth photographing—or so I thought. I regret not taking the time to explore other subject matter. I guess having a home to go back to whenever I felt bored was a sign that I wasn't really involved in the conflict at all.

What kinds of stuff did you wish you explored instead?
Well, for example, I wish I had interviewed and photographed the families of suicide bombers. I could've investigated what sort of families they were, or learned the stories or reasons why suicide bombers resorted to such an extreme action. Unfortunately, in my reckless pursuit to photographing "powerful" images, I failed to really think about and capture the essence of the conflict that was unfolding before my very eyes. But I was a clueless 23 or 24 year old brat at the time.

Aside from the stray bullet, was there anything else that you now consider a pivotal moment in your life?
I guess leaving Tokyo to settle in Hachijō-jima (a small island off the southern coast of Japan) is one of them. My time in Africa was also pretty pivotal. During my days in Palestine, I was simply moving from one conflict to another, relying on my instincts to chase the battle. But in Africa, I was more meticulous in how I weaved together the narrative. I was thinking a lot about where the narrative of the story belonged in the grand scheme of things. It was a new experience for me.

I also went through a difficult phase of trial-and-error because I wanted to refrain from being too subjective in my work. Liberia also stands out in my mind. It was the first time I was so frightened that I couldn't move a muscle. What was happening was atrocious—it was, perhaps, the pinnacle of human savagery, a kind of violence I never thought was possible.

A mother and daughter in Makamba, Burundi. 2007. From Ryo Kameyama’s Senjō.

A portrait of Mai-Mai, a self-defense organization that quickly turned into a roving gang in the Democratic Republic of Congo. From Ryo Kameyama’s Senjō.

A Mai-Mai soldier. From Ryo Kameyama’s Senjō.

A portrait of a Tutsi rebel leader taken in Democratic Republic of the Congo, North Kivu Province. From Ryo Kameyama’s Senjō.

In a mountainous region of Columbia with the ELN (National Liberation Army), in 2000. From Ryo Kameyama’s Senjō.

This article originally appeared on VICE ID.

Big Fish and Begonia, Chinese animators Liang Xuan and Zhang Chun’s blockbuster debut, is packed to the brim with enchanting moments. Magic-fueled flowers sprout and bloom in seconds. The sky connects to earth via a flying whirlpool. A girl floats into the air to dance with a winged fish. The first film from their new company, Bobo and Toto, also has awkwardly funny moments that would never make the cut at Disney, Pixar, or Studio Ghibli. It’s hard not to laugh five minutes into the film when a horse shits directly onto a child’s head. It took home $89 million at the box office in China, making it the country’s highest-grossing fully animated film of the year, and it’s coming to American theaters on April 6.

The film, which has been 12 years in the making, follows a teenage girl named Chun into a realm with a sky that connects to our world’s oceans. When young magic users come of age, they transform into sea creatures and explore the human world for a few days—the magical equivalent of backpacking Europe. In the form of a red dolphin, Chun gets caught in a net, and human boy drowns while saving her. When she returns home, Chun breaks the laws of nature to steal his soul, which has transformed into a tiny fish, from death. With the begrudging help of her best friend Qiu, she must raise the fish to adulthood in order to save his life, but he consequences tear her world apart. Watch and exclusive clip from the film below.

According to the directors, their visually arresting production signals a sea change for Chinese animation, which artistically and economically pales in comparison to American and Japanese powerhouses. At the very least, it’s a gorgeous take on the hero’s journey that infuses Hayao Miyazaki–style fantasy with Chinese traditions, culture, and values.

Liang names Miyazaki as one of the his primary influences. Big Fish and Begonia checks typical Miyazaki boxes like having a strong female lead and a fantastical take on classic folktales. Animation is generally trending toward more big-budget 3D CGI films, but like other independent animators inspired by Miyazaki, such as Usman Riaz, Liang and Zhang are dedicated to the hand-drawn animation style. He also cites live-action filmmakers like the Coen brothers, James Cameron, and Ang Lee, who are felt not only in the film’s adult themes, but also its creators’ talent for balancing artistic merit and commercial success.

While it screened at the New York International Children’s Film Festival, there’s no explain-like-I’m-five moral to be taken away from Big Fish and Begonia. Even when the characters are doing something good, it often comes at the expense of their community or their own well-being. On the surface, it’s similar to Spirited Away, Miyazaki’s 2003 tale of a girl who must adapt to a magical foreign land and save a man’s soul along the way. We spoke to the directors to parse their unfamiliar take on a kids’ movie and the process behind their exquisite animation style.

VICE: Big Fish and Begonia is ambitious for your first feature film. What is your training and experience as animators and directors?
Liang Xuan: Zhang Chun and I went to Tsinghua University, where I studied thermodynamics, and he studied art. The way we ended up making movies, I feel like it was completely destined to happen. I was 19 when we met. He was studying art, and we became friends.

I never took a liking to my major, so I gave up all the studies related to it, and only went to classes that I was interested in. I spent the rest of my time in the library to watch films. When I was a junior, I decided to not participate in a single exam, and started to create animation together with Chun.

After we started collaborating, we rented a house near the school. At the time, we actually didn’t know what we wanted to make, but the most important thing every month was paying rent for the apartment. We took part in a lot of commercial animation competitions, and our winnings from the competitions allowed us to continue. We usually finished in first place.

Big Fish and Begonia was originally a short film we made in 2004, and was also originally for a competition. The first prize for winning the competition was $12,600, and we thought that if we won, we’d be able to completely focus on our productions.

The original idea for this came from my dream. We gathered some friends together online and took about a month to create a seven-minute flash animation. A young girl receives a whale, and she raises it inside a cup, and all the while the whale continues to grow until only the sky is big enough to hold it.

We actually won first place in the competition, and our flash animation short had a sizable audience that supported it. We thought that we had to make it into a film one day. In March 2005, we founded our company B&T, and our goal was to make the best animated films in China.

We know that making an animated movie requires very high technical standards. So at first, we accumulated experience by doing some animated short films. In 2006, we made the animated short film Swallowtail, which had won three of the most significant awards in the Chinese animation industry. And because of this short film, we got the first investment to make Big Fish. In 2007, we began to create the test footage for our feature.

The film reminds me of Hayao Miyazaki’s Spirited Away. Was he one of your influences?
Miyazaki is an animation director that I like a great deal. When I first saw his work, I was surprised that this animation forefather’s films had so many imaginative ideas that were similar to what was in my own head. You have to remember, we have a 40-year age gap between us.

When I was little I read a lot of Western fairy tales, and Miyazaki mentioned in an interview that his work was deeply influenced by Western fairy tales like Gulliver’s Travels. When we did the short film version of Big Fish and Begonia in 2004, I was greatly influenced by The Little Mermaid, which is a fairy tale that I revere. Miyazaki’s Ponyo from 2008 was also a work that drew inspiration from The Little Mermaid.

How did he and other filmmakers influence you?
The Coen brothers knocked on countless doors to ask people to invest in their debut feature, which was almost like an early version of crowd-funding. Miyazaki took six years to finish Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, to prove himself to the people around him. We also took a long period of time to progress and mature. I like Ang Lee. I feel like his movies maintain an artistic sensibility while also achieving commercial success. So I hope our movies can achieve a similar result.

How does your work represent Chinese values?
There are many ancient literary classics in China, such as Zhuangzi and The Classic of Mountains and Seas, and other myths that have been passed down from generation to generation. There’s so much to learn from them. These stories are full of mysterious and magical elements, and we hope to produce new interpretations and presentations of these ancient words through the language of the film.

The reason why these myths and literary classics have a history of thousands of years is because they contain some universal values for different societies or mankind as a whole. The protection of life, the yearning for freedom and so on. So even after thousands of years, they can still resonate with people today.

What lesson should we take from Chun’s and Qiu’s behavior? Both are simultaneously self-sacrificing and selfish. Help me understand the moral message behind the film.
Chun is more of a protector toward the big fish. She feels like she killed a brave, kind-hearted boy, and so she’s driven by guilt to go and save him. This sort of idea is actually an act of goodwill.

But when she’s faced with the sky falling apart, Chun is merely a 16-year-old child, and lacks ability. She finally chooses to sacrifice herself, and turns into a giant begonia tree to plug the hole in the sky in order to save everyone.

Qiu’s soul is the leaf, and Chun’s soul is the begonia flower. And just like how leaves fall down to the roots to nourish a tree, everything that Qiu does for Chun is a sort of protection. Both of them are very pure. In reality, people always worry a great deal when they’re doing things, and purity is a very rare quality.

We need to face many choices and pay the resulting consequences in our lives. But you can never predict the future right now. Chun has no idea that she’ll cause her family and her people such a huge catastrophe when she releases Kun. But she has the courage to face the truth and take responsibility to make up for it, and that’s already good enough. We’re not like God who can see and understand everyone's values and choices. Unless you become them, which would be the only way to know whether you would make the same choice as others and be brave enough to take responsibility for whatever happens. It’s always easy to blame others. But the most difficult part is what choice you’re going to make when disaster happens to you, and that’s the key thing.

Big Fish has visuals that would never make it into a children’s movie in the US. How is your approach to movies for children different in China than in the United States?
In the eyes of the adults, Big Fish might be a story about freedom and protection. But children’s thinking is actually more naive. In their perspective, it might be a fairy tale about a big fish returning home.

There is no film rating system in China. So the choosing which movie Chinese children can watch depends greatly on their own choice along with their parents.

Did you have to change the film at all due to censorship from the Chinese government or media institutions?
Zhang Chun: During the storyboard stage, we had to consider the issue of censorship. So [in the final scene, in which Chun appears naked] there were two shells painted on to cover the lead female character’s chest. But at the production stage, we got rid of the shells because we thought the effect was more appropriate for the scene. In the end, we managed to pass censorship in China, and no modification was needed. We were all super excited when that got approved.

Why is this film so popular in China?
Liang: The Chinese animation industry is at the beginning of a huge growth period. In the past, Chinese animation had a brilliant history. We have ink animation classics such as Where Is Mama? (1960), and feature animations like Havoc in Heaven (1965). But Chinese animation has been developing slowly in the last few decades, and gradually it lost its ability to compete on a bigger stage. There is a big gap between Chinese animation and American and Japanese animation. When we had just entered the animation industry, the Chinese animation market was very small and almost everyone thought that animation was only for children. People didn’t believe in the quality of Chinese animations, so no one was willing to invest in meaningful projects. With economic development, mainstream moviegoers under 30 have been exposed to more content and grew up with animated films. That means the young local audience is looking forward to more Chinese animations coming out.

In 2004, we made the Flash animated short film version of Big Fish, which got a significant view count and received lots of attention online. From 2007 to 2009, we worked on the test footage for a feature film version of Big Fish, and got a lot of awards and attention from that. There were a lot of talented artists working together during the production of the test footage, and many of them later became elite artists in the local animation industry. At that time, a domestic animation that strived for such high quality was a novelty for the audience, and everyone hoped that it could be made into a movie one day. But no one had faith in the Chinese animation market at that time. Big Fish received investment from Enlight Media in 2013, when the film project was restarted. Finally, our film had a chance to meet the audience in 2016.

What’s next for you?
We’re working on the sequel to Big Fish and Begonia, and are currently in the pre-production phase. In the future, we’ll work on other fantasy or sci-fi animated films.

Big Fish and Begonia hits American theaters on April 6, 2018.

Sign up for our newsletter to get the best of VICE delivered to your inbox daily.

Nerd out about animation with Beckett Mufson on Twitter.

This article originally appeared on VICE US.

Michael B. Jordan has really been bringing the heat lately, first by destroying teenagers' retainers as Killmonger in Black Panther, and now, more literally, as a fireman in HBO's Fahrenheit 451.

The movie adaptation of Ray Bradbury's 1953 novel doesn't come out until May 19, but the full-length trailer HBO dropped on Thursday gives us more of a taste of what's to come. In it, Michael B. Jordan's character, Guy Montag, grapples with his role in burning "almost every physical book in the country" alongside his fire captain, Beatty (Michael Shannon). Even while taking what appear to be mind-controlling eye drops, Montag starts to question "why we burn."

The new trailer takes us into a not-so-far-off future, based on the dystopia Bradbury imagined, where children don't know what books are, holographic advertisements scream at us at every turn, and people are controlled by pharmaceuticals. Even still, Montag can't help but question his reality and appears to find himself among a cohort of rebels trying to restore knowledge to the world.

The film, directed by Ramin Bahrani, debuts on HBO next month. Until then, enjoy clips of Michael B. Jordan brooding about the "insanity" of books above.

Sign up for our newsletter to get the best of VICE delivered to your inbox daily.

Follow Lauren Messman on Twitter.

This article originally appeared on VICE US.