Black student unions date back to the late 1960s, and were formed so Black students could find community, and also make their schools more responsive to their needs.
Andrea Arnold’s 2021 film Cow is, ostensibly, a documentary about a dairy cow. But it offers an experience unlike any other documentary I have watched. Shot over four years on a dairy farm in Kent, England, its portrayal of a cow’s life eschews the reassuring framework of the human perspective. There is no narration, no talking heads, no facts and figures guiding us—yet it doesn’t feel like it’s just a typical animal documentary that has had those elements subtracted. It feels like a fictional film starring animal actors. It feels like a cinema verité documentary that a cow would make for other cows. The few humans who appear onscreen are insignificant, transient, and above all distant. The cow is our constant. “It’s not really a documentary. I don’t think it is. I don’t know what it is, but it’s not a documentary,” Arnold said in an interview with the Playlist, before admitting, “I don’t know why it’s not… What is a documentary, maybe?”