Filming Hip Hop

Silverdocs, an AFI/Discovery Channel Documentary Film Festival is hosting the North American premiere of Hip Hop Revolution. Hip Hop Revolution is a film by Weaam Williams documenting the 25 year evolution of hip hop in South Africa.

In the Cape Flats, outside Cape Town, South Africa the music of the South Bronx found a receptive audience who recognized in the American ghettos problems similar to their own. Economic apartheid is not so far from political apartheid, to the person trapped within. Despite isolation by the Western boycott during the 1980s and censorship by their own government, South Africans heard and found inspiration in American hip-hop from early East Coast right up through Public Enemy and NWA and in the break dancing and graffiti art that accompanied turntablism and street poetry.The result is an indigenous South African hip-hop culture, rich with African rhythms far more explicit than the indirect influence of that continent on American R&B, and deeply expressive of the obstacles facing post-Apartheid youth: HIV-AIDS, poverty, unemployment, gangsterism, poor access to education, and gender inequity. In interviews with South African musicians and artists past and present, including members of the influential Prophets of Da City (POC), Weaam Williams gives voice to South Africa’s hip-hop subculture, and reminds Western viewers of the complexity of black experience, at home and worldwide.

Weaam Williams is a published poet and short story writer. She studied at the University of Cape Town, and works as an insert producer/director for the popular SABC magazine show. Her first feature documentary was The Feminine Divine. Hip Hop Revolution, which has been a three year ‘labour of love’, is her second feature length documentary. She is currently in post-production with two other documentary films. Hip Hop Revolution will be shown at the Silverdocs Festival on June 13, at 1:30 p.m. at the AFI Silver Theater and Cultural Center in Silver Springs, Maryland.