 action & events Slingshot Hip Hop selected for Sundance!  SynopsisThis exhilarating documentary from the emerging Palestinian Hip Hop scene, by Jackie Reem Salloum, is heartbreaking, humorous, and unlike anything else you've seen on contemporary life in Israel and Palestine. Saturated with the style and sound of Palestine's first rappers, the film brings us close to its young protagonists as they make history armed with only their voices. A new generation slings rhymes instead of rocks as Palestinian rappers form alternative voices of resistance within the Israeli-Palestinian struggle. Interweaving multiple stories of young Palestinians in Israel, Gaza, and the West Bank, filmmaker Jackie Reem Salloum spotlights a vibrant hip-hop scene as emerging artists discover rap and employ it as a means to surmount age-old schisms deepened by occupation and poverty.
Tamer, Mahmoud and Suhell are the charismatic artists of DAM, the first group to put Palestinian hip-hop on the map. They struggle to produce an album despite crushing poverty, progressing from their initial awkward recording attempts to triumphant sold-out shows in Europe. As politics increasingly informs their art, these young rappers evolve into community leaders and activists for social change.
Trapped in Gaza, facing ongoing military attacks, the group PR (Palestinian Rapperz) hope someday to meet their fellow rappers, but separation walls and internal checkpoints prohibit access.
Surprisingly, Palestinian hip-hop is not just for the boys. Female soloist Abeer and the group Arapeyat are redefining gender roles and shaking cultural traditions. Devastated by decades of conflict, yet armed with the music of revolution, rappers portray the hopes and dreams of a new generation of Palestinians defying the boundaries that separate them. Slingshot Hip Hop is a rousing parable of the Palestinian struggle propelled by an American art form gone global.
Jackie Reem Salloum is a New York based artist and filmmaker who draws inspiration from the humble perseverance of her family’s struggle in their homeland—Palestine—and as immigrants in the US. Her work focuses on challenging the stereotypes of Arabs in the media through film and multimedia art. She has directed several shorts exploring this issue, including Planet of the Arabs, which received the International Editing Award at the 2005 CinemaTexas Film Festival and was an official selection in that year’s Sundance Film Festival. Five years in the making, SlingShot Hip Hop is Salloum’s first feature length documentary. Related Links 
more from this section  • Video: Protesting Israeli racist and ethnic cleansing advocate Efraim Eitam @ Pittsburgh Hillel (Thursday, February 4th, 2010)  • Letter to Egypt's Minister of Foreign Affairs about Egypt's actions against convoys to Gaza (Wednesday, January 6th, 2010) • End Israeli Apartheid: Cairo Declaration (Friday, January 1st, 2010) • Urgent Appeal: Support Independent Media (Thursday, October 1st, 2009) • Statement by Richard Goldstone on behalf of the Members of the United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict before the Human Rights Council (Tuesday, September 29th, 2009) • Pocket of Resistance to play Pigstock on July 18th! (Friday, July 10th, 2009) |
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