Cinephiles flock to Brooklyn for Bushwick Film Fest – The 7th Annual Bushwick Film Festival kicks off today with a red carpet event
The 7th Annual Bushwick Film Festival kicks off today in Brooklyn, New York. Until Sunday, film lovers, goers, aficionados, dilettantes and the like can convene in the name of good cinema, making their way through the active, niche cityscape that is the neighbourhood of Bushwick.
The film fest schedule boasts a breadth of engagements, including feature length screenings, shorts, panel discussions, interactive workshops, a New Media Day, and Bushwick Film Fest’s Cinema Talks series. There are industry happy hours, red carpet events and parties; workshops on crowdfunding, hand painting filmmaking, and understanding distribution; and panels on topics like women in film and TV and conscious filmmaking, to name just a few of the fest’s goings-on.
Some of the feature films Glass is most excited about are writer-director Damian John Harper’s Los Ángeles and Kenneth Price’s documentary The Hip-Hop Fellow.
The first feature length, fiction narrative film for Harper, Los Ángeles follows the progression of one young man and his family’s intent to cross the border from Mexico into Los Angeles, California. The politics of gang life interfere with their trek, complicating the traditional narrative of immigration to the United States. The film calls to mind Dennis Hopper’s 1988 Colors, in which two Anglo cops patrol the urban streets of 1980s LA Latino and other racially exclusive gang wars are rampant, territories ambiguously designated by turf, ethnicity and culture, and sociopolitical loyalties. Hopper’s film could be said to have brought a glimmer of humanity to gang interactions so often only seen from the uni-perspectival outside-in; Harper’s seems to shed a similar light on the turmoil of exploring youth amongst scenarios of migration, illegality, gang wars, and the distinct ethno-culture of migratory Mexicans.
The Hip-Hop Fellow draws from an equally as distinct ethno-culture—that of the hip-hop scene. The documentary feature follows Grammy Award winning producer, DJ, and rapper 9th Wonder as he teaches a Standards of Hip-Hop course at Harvard University. The September 14th edition of T: The New York Times Style Magazine featured a brief article by Ross Simonini titled ‘Rock and Enroll,’ which was subheaded Scholarly musicians prove that PhDs can play.
The film and article both describe and pay tribute to the trend toward informed popular music, toward “smart” lyrics and self-referencing tendencies that are engaged both with music’s past and its present, often using such contexts to reflect on music’s future. Via 9th Wonder’s trajectory through the university institution, The Hip-Hop Fellow explores hip-hop music’s specific history, culture, and role in academia, its curriculum, and its culture. The film features scholars and musicians who are the foremost purveyors and promulgators of hip-hop culture as historically, culturally, and socially relevant. The screening will be followed by a talk-back with legendary artist, writer, musician, filmmaker, producer, educator, and hip-hop activist Michael Holman.
In hopes that this sampler of some of the socially charged independent films at this year’s Bushwick Film Festival has whet your palate, visit the festival’s site here to plan your schedule, and RSVP and purchase tickets for events, panels, workshops, screenings and more.
by Emily Rae Pellerin
Images via BushwickFilmFestival.com
The Bushwick Film Festival is on until October 5.