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The Hip-Hop Film & Music Festival presents:

Estillo Hip-Hop (US/Latin America 2002 15mim) Vie Bravo
A Work-In-Progress Short film breathtaking journey into the never before seen world of South of the border hip-hop music and culture. You meet the groups, people, and language that define this burgeoning and radically progressive movement. Veebravo@hotmail.com

The Coalition for the Homeless  (US 2002 24mim) F.L.E.P.P.
A short film project addressing laws and ordinances making homelessness a crime in San Francisco. Set against a hip-hop score produced by The Living Legends this film makes you think on all levels of the issue. vivacolombia@riseup.net

Hypocrite (US 2002 12mim) David Chalker
A controversial short film about a woman who is being stalked by a faceless unknown character. Shot from the stalker’s POV, supported by a brilliant hip-hop soundtrack and compelling score, the audience is pushed into the seat as the Hypocrite. Winner of the San Francisco International Film Festival’s “Gate Award” and Most Innovative Short at the Tiburon International Film Festival “Prepare to have you ass thoroughly kicked as an angry protagonist knocks you out of viewer apathy and passive consumption. A thought-provoking piece that puts you on a swooping, spinning ride of enlightenment. This is a definite must-see for everyone intrigued by film theory and the voyeuristic politics of our film like gaze” www.hypocrite.tv

Cubamore (Cuba/US 2001 115min) Joshua Bee Alafia
Cubamor is a story of love, mysticism and self discovery set in Havana, Cuba, 2000. The story follows two encounters of love between Americans and Cubans, and though the characters do not know each other, they often share the same settings, and live in the same neighborhood. Direct from the Cuban hip-hop Underground, cubamor brings us into a colorful, mystical world where love knows no borders. Mixing magical realism surreally, and cinema verite’ immediacy, cubamor finds the earthy in the ethereal, sincerity among the world of hustlers, and searches the hearts of our protagonists for love of strangers.

Red and I

 A personal documentary about “loss: loving into life and death.  “You have to trust that every friendship has no end, that a communion of saints exists among all those, living and dead, who have truly loved God and one another.  You know from experience how real this is.  Those you have loved deeply and who have died live on in you, not just as memories but as real presences.”  -Henri Nouwen (from the book All About Love by bell hooks)”

Red and I uses b/w still photographs from family albums, color super 8 homemovies, audio interviews of family members, found sounds and archived images to tell the story of the irrefutable love experienced between parent and child.

Resilience A film by Amy Happ
1997, 14 minutes, Color, Video 16mm

This affecting memoir employs haunting imagery and personal narration to evoke the relationship between the filmmaker, her beloved stepmother Vyola, and Vyola”s battle with alcohol addiction. Recalling her experiences as an Alaskan Eskimo woman living in white middle America, Vyola describes how drinking became her refuge. Documenting Vyola”s sobriety and struggle, this thoughtful, accessible film is a powerful discussion starter about racism”s searing effects, the cycles of addiction and changing definitions of family

Plus other shorts.

One of the most remarkable political documents of our time, Point of Order! is a hilarious, often exasperating, journey into the inevitable fall of one of America”s greatest political demagogues. For five incredible weeks, millions of Americans tuned in to watch as U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy”s reckless crusade to expose Communist subversion in the U.S. Army backfired against the pressure of televised media. With Roy Cohn at his side, McCarthy”s innuendoes and unsubstantiated claims against the Army were no match for the “heroic” Joe Welch. As Special Counsel for the U.S. Army, the meek and mild spoken Welch unmasked McCarthyism and further pushed Joe McCarthy into political oblivion. The sheer theatricality of the Army-McCarthy Hearings also serves as a milestone in the history of television and its manipulative influence over the evolution of our political system.

1963 B/W  97mins