Phillip Michael Youmans

Former news host and journalist Tamron Hall discusses all things topical and engages those she interviews in thorough meaningful and entertaining conversations.

Melvin, a reluctant hero who is far from super, has been suppressing his telekinetic powers for years with booze, drugs, and women. In the process, he has failed at practically everything, most of all as a parent to his son. After a brush with death, Melvin decides to use his powers for good and clean up the streets of New Orleans with the help of his best friend/definitely-not-a-sidekick, Lucille. For a man who can do the impossible, it might be a fight even he can’t win.

Set among the cane fields of rural Louisiana, Burning Cane follows a deeply religious mother struggling to reconcile her convictions of faith with the love she has for her troubled son.

Based her grandfather’s boyhood in St. Louis, Yasmin Gorenberg tells a story of the pain passed from refugee parents to their children and the hope that can overcome it. “40 Nickels” captures the image of a generation of immigrants to the United States in the 1920’s and 1930’s and through that spotlights the effects of the 1919 pogroms in Eastern Europe. This is a film about parents and children: how trauma never leaves a family, and how hope and resilience is also passed down. It asks the question: Can a new generation look at the world with wonder rather than fear?

November, an urgent film about white male privilege set against scenes of Black joy, freedom, and beauty.

Upon immigrating to New York, a West-African mother finds comfort in the dresses her daughter makes for her.

Morality clashes with ceremony and things go awry.

Phillip Youmans made this short exclusively for Dazed in part of his takeover as guest editor. Described as a love letter to his home of New Orleans this stunningly shot short is truly poetic.

“Won’t You Celebrate With Me” is about Black woman unity in an alternative Afrofuture. The film depicts a small community of Black women who have let go of technology, material possession, and contact to the outside world. Through this isolation, they’ve developed an unbreakable bond.