by MARK SLUTSKY

From Charlie Ahearn shooting Super-8 footage of graffiti artists and breakdancers in the Bronx to multi-million-dollar music videos, hip hop culture and the moving image have always had a close, mutually beneficial relationship. So it’s not surprising that hip hop film festivals have sprouted up all over the world.

L’International du Cinéma Hip Hop began two years ago in Vancouver and quickly expanded to Montreal, where it’s now based, and Toronto. The festival takes over the Cinéma du Parc (May 19–21) and will present a variety of movies—mostly documentaries—that explore the cultural, social and purely musical aspects of hip hop. And with films from all over the world, there’s definitely an emphasis on hip hop’s global reach.

Hip Hop Ciné (as the festival is referred to in shorthand) kicks off with a couple of films that have already made appearances, albeit brief ones, here in Montreal. NEXT: A Primer on Urban Painting by local director Pablo Aravena, which played a brief run at the Parc, is a dense, comprehensive look at graffiti art, following practitioners from New York, Japan, Montreal and beyond. That’s followed by Just for Kicks, which showed at last year’s Resfest. Directed by Lisa Leone and Thibaut de Longeville, this film is an uncritical, if extremely entertaining and funny look at sneaker culture, and specifically its ties to hip hop. Rounding out opening night, Kevin Fitzgerald’s Freestyle: The Art of Rhyme explores the world of MCing and is credited for inspiring the very first Hip Hop Ciné.

Rhymes with reason

There are also plenty of films at the fest this year exploring hip hop’s impact as catalyst for social change. The 4REAL Showcase features three movies by director Joshua Thome: 4REAL Kenya (co-directed by Sol Guy), 4REAL Brazil and 4REAL Venezuela. Kenya follows Somali-born Canadian rapper K’naan Warsame to Nairobi to shoot a music video, where he and his crew encounter Salim Mohamed, a local legend who runs a medical clinic and development program amidst intense poverty.

Brazil, set in Rio’s now-famous “City of God” favela (or slum), features Brazilian rap star MV Bill, who also runs a network of community centres across the country. And in Venezuela, New York rapper M1 (of Dead Prez fame) meets Hip Hop Revolution founder Gustavo Borges and explores the country’s inter-connected spheres of hip hop and social activism.

In the same vein, Alina Teodorescu’s Paraiso is a doc about Madera Limpia, a band of young musicians living in the village of Guantánamo, Cuba, where they shape their own instruments out of wood and create a uniquely homemade brand of rap music. And Jeff Zimbalist and Matt Mochary’s Favela Rising follows former drug dealer Anderson Sá’s music-driven AfroReggae movement in the ultra-violent Rio favela of Vigário Geral, the “Brazilian Bosnia.”

Retrospectives and return customers

The festival also features an assortment of shorts and music videos this year, including a profile of Bronx-based filmmaker Jun Ohki’s work, Ninja Tune and Big Dada video retrospective and some shorter docs such as Daniel Rosenberg’s Montreal-centric Before it Drops. Focusing on four Montreal producers—Twitch, DJ Manifest, Simahlak and Parafino, Rosenberg looks at our town’s often slept-on hip hop scene, and features music and sound design by Patrick Cooke-Poirier.

And returning to the festival for the second year in a row is legendary NYC photographer and filmmaker Charlie Ahearn (Wild Style), who was documenting the world of hip hop when few people outside of the Bronx even knew it existed. He’ll be there to present his short film Bongo New York as well as FUSE: Ahearn & HVW8, an art exhibit at the Nest that teams him with local artists Heavyweight (who, incidentally, just celebrated their eighth anniversary). That’s a definite don’t-miss, as is Edo Bertoglio’s legendary film Downtown 81, which screens after Bongo New York and stars painter Jean-Michel Basquiat as an itinerant artist wandering around New York’s Lower East Side in the creatively fertile year of the film’s title.

L’International du Cinéma Hip Hop de Montréal runs Friday, May 19–Sunday, May 21. For more info, visit www.hiphopcine.com

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