Ananya Panchal

Written by Bri LaMere. Graphic by Ananya Panchal. Welcome to Hostess City History: a monthly column where I gather a corner of the city’s history to share. April is especially important for nature …

Spring has always been a time of reminiscing for me. My birthday falls in April, and every year I have more memories to wash over me. Oftentimes, the only cure for this wave of nostalgia is specific songs, or rather, a meticulously curated playlist.

There was no doubt in my mind that I would study French when it came time to pick a language class in middle school. My aunts can speak French, my last name is French, why wouldn’t I give it a try? I was pretty okay at it, and graduated high school with a certificate that alleges I’m bilingual. I suppose I can make my way around France or Quebec, as long as the locals don’t talk too fast.

As my junior year comes to a close, I often find myself reminiscing on my life before SCAD. Back home, I went to community college straight out of high school. With both parents at work, I had to depend on public transportation to get to my classes–and there was definitely a learning curve.

The Met Gala is one of the biggest fashion events of the year. What started as a way to fundraise for the Met’s Costume Institute has become another exclusive event for celebrities to flaunt their wealth while the rest of us can hardly afford gas.

I can’t pinpoint exactly what repels me about my Minnesota hometown after spending more than a week there. College students who move a thousand miles from home usually say we left for bigger and better opportunities. But deep down, maybe we just wanted to get away from our high school peers, prodding families, and buildings that are haunted with memories of the past.

Another letter arrives, and I still haven’t managed to send one back to my friend. It isn’t for lack of interest, but when her first postcard arrived mid-June, a relic of her trip to Maine, I was in awe of her crab-clad cardstock overflowing with pressed flowers, scenic Polaroids, and souvenir stickers pouring from the envelope. From then on, every time I sat down to put my own summer update together, I was ashamed of my meager pen pal supplies and put it off.

What exactly makes an A24 movie feel like an A24 movie? I started thinking about this because I kept having the same reaction to completely different movies: this feels like an A24 movie. Sometimes it was the way a scene looked. Sometimes it was an uncomfortable character choice or a story that seemed determined to go somewhere I did not expect. Eventually, I started wondering if there was actually something behind that instinct or if “A24” had simply become shorthand for a certain kind of movie.

Black cats are common subjects of superstition; however, there are many opposing views on whether they symbolise good or bad luck. In Cambridge, there is an old local superstition that black cats protect houses from bad omens. Cat skulls were even buried in the walls of houses to protect the inhabitants from ‘evil.’ In Scotland, a stray cat on your front porch signals upcoming luck. All the while, countries like the United States, Belgium, and Spain associate this feline creature with Satanism or witchcraft. In my own country, India, black cats crossing your path have always been a prevailing superstition.

“Fatherland” is the third film in a loose historical trilogy by Polish director Paweł Pawlikowski, following “Ida” and “Cold War.” Although each film follows an independent story, all three explore how the larger political and social upheavals of postwar Europe shape people’s everyday lives, identities, and relationships. “Cold War” interrogates how love can survive political borders, while “Ida” follows a young Polish nun whose discovery of her Jewish ancestry forces her to confront an unfamiliar identity. “Fatherland” turns its attention to familial relationships, examining the emotional distance between Nobel Prize-winning author Thomas Mann (Hanns Zischler) and his daughter Erika Mann (Sandra Hüller) as they navigate a divided Germany while grieving the death of Thomas’s son, Klaus Mann (August Diehl).