Fresh Styles Film Festival 2006

Fresh Styles is the UK’s first ever film festival devoted to hip hop culture.

Fresh Styles is committed to showing the best features, documentaries, shorts and music videos on this hip hop planet. It is an organisation that promotes access to cinema for marginalised filmmakers and audiences and also aims to open up the amazing vibrancy of hip hop culture to a non-hip hop audience. Fresh Styles is touring the UK with a selection of films during 2006 before the main festival event in Brighton in November.

Fresh Styles in conjunction with Breakin’ Convention presents a night of hip hop film, with a special presentation of…
Beat This: A Hip Hop History

The groundbreaking documentary from 1984 that switched a generation of UK youth on to hip hop! Made for the BBC’s Arena series by respected documentary maker Dick Fontaine, this film was the first time hip hop was on UK screens, featuring footage of Kool Herc’s original block parties, the Cold Crush Brothers, Jazzy Jay and the Dynamic Rockers. After the screening there’ll be an exclusive Q+A session with Dick Fontaine chaired by DJ Pogo and Jonzi D, in which he’ll share his reminiscences of what it was like to live in uptown New York and witness the birth of a cultural phenomenon.

A night of Hip Hop film featuring the seminal documentary ‘BEAT THIS: A HIP HOP HISTORY’ and a Q+A with director Dick Fontaine.

Fresh Styles Film Festival in association with Breakin’ Convention.
Thursday 27th April
Studio Theatre, Sadler’s Wells, 7.45pm
Originally shown as part of the BBC’s ‘Arena’ series in 1984, ‘Beat This: a Hip Hop History’ is one of the first glimpses into the nascent hip hop culture of the Bronx. Looking at all of the arts of hip hop as practised by such legends as The Cold Crush Brothers, Jazzy Jay, Brim and The Dynamic Rockers, as well as the musical and social revolutionary Afrika Bambaata and hip hop’s godfather DJ Kool Herc. Dick Fontaine’s seminal film captures the main progenitors of the scene as it evolves from a tiny street movement into an internationally disseminated culture. ‘Beat This: A Hip Hop History’ features in-depth interviews as well as footage from Kool Herc’s original block parties. This is unmissable breaking, graffiti, rapping and DJing from back in the day, in all its crazy-costumed glory!

We are delighted to welcome Dick Fontaine, the director of ‘Beat This: A Hip Hop History’ to take questions after the screening. Dick Fontaine was a founder member of Granada Television’s groundbreaking ‘World in Action’ series and has made two films on early hip hop culture as well as many films on black music and musicians including Sonny Rollins, Marvin Gaye and Art Blakey. He is currently Head of Documentary Direction at the National Film and Television School. ‘Beat This: A Hip Hop History’ will be accompanied by a selection of short films from the touring programme of the Fresh Styles Film Festival.
These include:
‘Foot Cred’
Humourous and inventive digital short in which Normski travels to New York to find the holy grail of trainers, only to have them stepped on on the subway.
‘Redder Than Red’
Documentary about the Hanifa ‘Queen’ Hudson, AKA Bubbles, one of the first female breakers worldwide to break into the male-dominated art form. She danced with legendary crew ‘The B-Boys’ outta Wolverhampton and one of the film’s highlights is the reunion of the crew, as they dance together for the first time in over 20 years.
‘Bling: Consequences and Repercussions’
Acclaimed hard-hitting documentary narrated by Chuck D of Public Enemy examining the dark underside of U.S. hip hop’s passion for ‘bling’ – the human impact that the trade in conflict diamonds has on the population of war-torn Sierra Leone
Details:
Thursday 27th April
Studio Theatre, Sadler’s Wells
7.45pm
Tickets: £6.50
http://www.breakinconvention.com/oe_fresh.asp

RIZE Film screening and Q&A with Miss PrissyFresh Styles Film festival in association with Breakin’ Convention Monday 1st May (Bank Holiday) 5pm, Studio Theatre, Sadler’s Wells David LaChapelle’s highly acclaimed documentary, Rize follows the evolution of Krump, the groundbreaking dance phenomenon to come out of the streets of Los Angeles. With footage first seen in the Clowns in the Hood documentary shown on Channel 4, this feature length film charts the development of the dance style, which was unwittingly started by Tommy the Clown (seen in the UK at Breakin’ Convention 2004) – a children’s entertainer. By launching his own hip hop dance academy Tommy, who is acknowledged as an originator of the style offered young people an alternative to gangs and crime. Through dance they have found another way to express themselves; painting their faces and entertaining at children’s parties. Tommy had a huge impact on the local community and many rival groups were established. With each group developing their own aesthetic and style, the dancing also took on a new life, developing into what is now widely regarded as Krump – frantic, aggressive dance moves often performed in mock battle. This is a stunning movie which is not only beautifully filmed in a way you’d expect from someone usually associated with fashion photography, but it also takes a deeper more poignant look at the society and cultural parallels which have caused and influenced this dance phenomenon. The screening of Rize is followed by a one-off Q&A with Miss Prissy, one of the film’s stars, who has danced with Madonna and many other pop and hip hop acts. Details: Monday 1 May (Bank Holiday) Studio Theatre, Sadler’s Wells 5pm Tickets: £6.50 http://www.breakinconvention.com/oe_rize.asp