Hip-Hop Documentary Films

[Raven]

As part of student prep for the We Are Everywhere youth summit at our school, students in Popular Kultures class will be watching a number of films on hip-hop history and tracking timelines and contributors to a hip-hop family tree. In the past I have explained to student that no text covers all of the history and that most of these films begin hip-hop history with the mid-seventies and early 80's, while most oral history begins the movement in the mid 60's. Nevertheless the documentaries that have come out the last six years have also shown the self-empowerment for documenting history from the community's perspective, with the new technological assets that are available to the public. WIth a small budget and the right contacts, anyone can create a documentary today, which has created new access for hip-hop novices, hip-hop historians, and hip-hop lovers (and haters). For the various units I do that focus on hip-hop, these films have been awesome! Some are performative, and some historical reviews...

Scratch-Turntablism and dee-jaying
City vs. City 3 and 4-breaking battle films produced in Chicago!
The Freshest Kids- history of breaking
Style Wars- the classic on graffiti and hip-hop in general with the 20th anniversary update!
Beat Kings-history of beat production and rap music
Red Bull BC One Battle 2005-breaking
B-Boy Planet-great global breaking film, but it lacks b-girls
FX-Bronx graffiti crew's self-doc
The Meeting of Styles films-dvd's covering the international graffiti tour that hits 21 countries
Fully Flared-skating and breakdance cross-over

Many of these are available through amazon...a blessing for teachers
Maybe you all have somethings in your collections that I need to add...
Feel free to share!

[Caitlin Nagle]

Here are some links to hip-hop documentaries that might be useful, you may want to make sure they are suitable first.

http://www.netweed.com/hiphop/movies/

1. A Street History
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3972671039973659170&q=h...

2. The Hip Hop Years/Origin of Hip Hop

3. Beat Digging
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c5IJjBvSFyU

4. I am not sure what this is called but it is pretty informative
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LfW0N0rFTMY

Hope any of these help!