3 posts tagged “hip hop”
Carl you rock! Congrats to your awards, including the recent Best Documentary by London Independent Film Festival award! If you love poetry and youth and social justice - this is the documentary to watch.
ABOUT THE FILM: "2nd Verse” explores urban teen life in the San Francisco Bay Area through the rising popularity of poetry and Spoken Word. Although poetry is the unifying characteristic that brings these young people together, the film does not concentrate on their poems so much as it tells the story of their lives amid the Bay Area's melting pot of ethnic and economic backgrounds. We show how these teens coexist and draw strength from each other, and how these youth poets are changed by their engagement with spoken word, exploring their identity and connection to their unique California community. From a sixteen-year-old girl who lost her father to alcohol at a young age, to an undocumented teen struggling with poverty and his sexuality, to a privileged boy in San Francisco who attends one of the country’s most elite private schools, “Second Verse” endeavors to initiate the viewer into a world rarely seen or acknowledged by the general population."
"Spoken word in the Bay Area more than in any other place in the country is supported, is prolific, is dynamic, is political, and has more relevancy here than anywhere else in the country. I think that a large part of the catalyst for that is the amount of attention that young people are paying to themselves, to the lyricism in popular culture, in hip-hop culture and the way they are reacting to it. They are creating music but also expanding upon and creating a new form of lyricism, and I think it trickles up rather than trickling down. The youth get inspired by their mentors and by their educators but we in turn see the force with which young people are coming with their words and it just pushes the whole form forward." Marc Bamuthi Joseph: poet, performer, educator
Watch this scene from 1989s from Teen Witch, which "might be the exact moment which hip hop died."
Watch video here
