The cries of terror and disbelief continue. Teenagers lie down in front of the White House to protest the nation’s tepid, stalled gun-control legislation. Parents grieve for their children and stare at the wound carved into the American soul. Assault rifles have more rights than schoolchildren.

A movement simmers, or so it seems, a week after the latest deadly school shooting: seventeen people killed at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, many more injured. A disturbed loner — yet another one — is arrested.

It’s not simply violence, but wildly profound violation, yet again, yet again, of the deepest of human values: Life is sacred.

Isn’t it?

How can this keep happening?

The Feb. 8-19 Pan African Film Festival’s 26th annual extravaganza of Black-themed fiction, documentary, animated and short productions, workshops, panels and art expo was arguably one of its best fetes. Once again, PAFF presented Angelenos and aficionados with the opportunity to see on the big screen at Cinemark Baldwin Hills Crenshaw Plaza movies that most film fans may otherwise not get a chance to watch. At the same time, filmmakers from around the world had the opportunity for their films to be shown in L.A., arguably the capital of world cinema.

Here’s a wrap up of the other works I saw at PAFF 2018:

Haitian director/co-writer Raoul Peck’s well-made The Young Karl Marx is one of the most significant biopics in cinema history and arguably among the genre’s best. As the 200th anniversary of the birth of communism’s co-founder approaches, Peck has beautifully dramatized Marx’s life during the 1840s as a 20-something lover, writer, husband, philosopher, father, journalist, friend and above all, revolutionary. Berlin-born actor August Diehl (Quentin Tarantino’s 2009 Inglourious Basterds) delivers a moving, truthful performance as the thinker whom - as this movie reveals - was also a man of action.

I loved school from the minute I set foot in kindergarten. Blessed with two older sisters who brought home their schoolwork and parents who read, I was an apt and eager pupil when my older sister, Marva, taught me to read when I was four. (Since she is five years older, I’m sure it was under the guise of her babysitting and bossing me around, but who knew?) As someone who has earned a doctorate, is a professor, and a writer, I am convinced that teaching someone to read is the most valuable of gifts. I’ll always be grateful to Marva for it.

I attended Highland Avenue Elementary School here in Columbus, and had the most wonderful third-grade teacher in Carolyn Brunk Keller. The thing I liked most about her is that she loved to read, noticed that I did, too, and gave me every opportunity to do so. After that year, nothing would do but that I had to become a teacher. While I did a number of things before that, I finally landed in my chosen profession, albeit teaching at the college level rather than third grade as I assumed I would. When I saw Reading with Patrick in the book store, I was immediately intrigued.