a social cinematography

Flaviana Lasan

Rap is a short film.

This feeling-assertion above reveals the approach of this parallel section, which cuts across the musical dimension, the inaugural matrix from which hip-hop culture emerged and expanded. Looking firmly at the things surrounding the sonic dimension, it is possible to approach its production, which involves recognizing oneself in the lived world; the impact on the performance of social behavior and, consequently, the elaboration of philosophies; its role in shaping fashion, communication, and ways of feeling the universe.

dHIPloma de HOPposição also deals with everyday emotions, bureaucratic emotions, or emotions considered unaesthetic, such as boredom, apathy, envy, and material frustration. It encounters films that, from the most delicate to the most concrete edge, address the conditions of violence. And this does not translate into a determinism regarding what hip-hop culture is or where it is situated — even though, historically, it emerged in repressed areas — but rather advances toward something even more important, insofar as the films presented transform the denunciation of suffered violence into an important pillar of community imagination. This imagination does not deny violence; rather, it permeates it, refusing to place the free and conscious subject in the position of an object.

There are many idiosyncrasies within hip-hop culture, and these peculiar characteristics become more refined as we realize that its inscription can be found in every culture on planet Earth. It has spread across various Indigenous ethnicities and manifests itself in urban centers, just as it does in the peripheries. It is on the islands. It is in the Persian Gulf. It is in the desert. Here in Brazil, here in this cinema, hip-hop informs the making of short films from different regions, manifesting itself not only as a theme, but as aesthetics, rhythm, body, visuality, and thought. Sometimes explicitly, at other times infiltrating the very language of the films.

Braço Forte is the film that opens the parallel section, demonstrating these infiltrations. There is a rhythm created by the characters’ dialogue and certain attitudes of opposition to systemic oppression that immediately recall some rap songs. Another subtle sign awakens us to this film: a red flat-brim cap. From there to the final credits, it is a delight to follow the short film, taking into account the clues it leaves behind… Perhaps it was necessary to reach the end before admitting these clues. 

If there is anyone who does not recognize hip-hop culture in these sparks, the documentary Street verses (Versos de Rua) and the fiction film Endless rhyme (A Última Sílaba Tônica) make it unmistakably clear how deeply this culture permeates our experiences. From the journey to work to entertainment spaces, both are imbued with poetry activated by the mouth or by the hands. It is unsettling in its scarcity and moving in its rupture to hear and see the word “poetry” repeated so many times. Repeated because it seems to liberate us from violence. I am not talking about this fucked-up violence being televised right now, sustained by drones and bombs, blowing apart nations on the old continent. I mean the violence that attacks our minds, hearts, and stomachs, becoming just as cruel as the one we are able to watch. If one short film evokes the end of the world’s sound, the other elaborates an infinite echo. Between the ingenuity of constructing a film from fragments of recognized visual representations, like a sample in a musical composition, and the transposition of everyday life into a lyrical state, what remains with us is the political representation of hip-hop in society as it is. At this point, then, it becomes impossible not to recognize this culture as a historical force in the construction of subjectivities, sociabilities, and forms of political action, especially from the peripheries, whose production has come to decisively shape the way the present is organized and imagined. Let me be clear: I am not saying that hip-hop contributes to humanity, but that it is an agent in producing contemporaneity itself.

In present-day Belo Horizonte, the capital of Minas Gerais, Bounce follows the rise of hip-hop into dance. In the body itself, the culture develops, making identity a pillar of living well; it evokes the condition of belonging, elaborating the conditions of race, gender, and class; it reflects the Belo Horizonte scene and its national and international resonance, turning it into a reference point. The short film also points, spatially, to the public structures claimed and empowered by the youth movement, restoring a form of maintenance guided by pichadores, graffiti artists, and old-school MCs. Between the walls of these structures, we arrive at Help a brother out, which closes the screening. A Brazilian-style Western, taking us to Alagoas, bringing straight talk with no beating around the bush. The short film discusses relationships and the hierarchies performed in education, work, and the notion of property. It is symbolic that, amid so many questions and intersections, the film’s main insinuation about what is wrong lies in the possibility of a man returning to graffiti the wall.

This social cinematography inspires us and demonstrates why certain cultures are repressed. Because they have power. And so, the title of this parallel section evokes the diploma — a double object and an instrument of structural power — inspired by the duality of rap battles; it also stems from the historical realization that, in just over 50 years, hip-hop has been capable of producing a cultural transformation on a global scale, and that culture produces phenomena. What began in a more palatable form through a new sound became a school, with all the weight that this word carries in its process of reproducing narratives, human formation, and the restoration of an order. There is no need to describe the system in which we are involved in order to describe a culture’s opposition to it, because this is not about waging a counter-narrative, but rather about seeking ways of existing in the face of that in which one is involved. The characteristics of this culture disperse across the various categories of art, and cinema would be no different.

Cinema is rhythm and poetry.