We need to change our ways

The entire episode screens out here this Thursday at 8:35PM on ABC1.

For years as a teenager I was completely obsessed with everything about skateboarding, especially what was going in New York during the mid-late Nineties. You do not understand how keen I am to go check out this Coan Nichols and Rick Charnoski made documentary on skateboarding in NY from the Seventies to now.

All About Ska

"The Origin of the word Ska" featuring Benjamin Zephaniah delves into where the word, genre comes from, in JA. It also sheds light on when Ska hit LDN in 1964.

Königreich Arktis DVD trailer

Take a second to marvel at the brilliance.

Was listening to ATL ambient, garage, punk group Deer Hunter, fitted perfect while watching. A song of theirs came on Caroline Gates program on FBi 94.5FM.

Suffice to say, I'll be seeking out that new Microcastle album.

There is so much good music out there, borders on impossible to keep up.

That is just part of the reason why it has been so quiet here lately…

Smog city

VBS.TV have just released another in their video documentary series "toxic". Their latest is "Toxic Linfen: China, the worlds most polluted city." While discussions of the at times an almost non existent blue sky over parts of China, as it's residents inhale ridiculous levels of Carbon Monoxide, Carbon Dioxide, etc, are nothing new, the world's media has been reporting on this for some time now. Toxic Linfen, approaches the issue in it's own way, offering an in-depth study, a somewhat bleak look at one Chinese city, one of the top twenty most polluted cities in the world (Linfen) and the effect it's reliance on coal is having on it's residents and the surrounding environment. Also explored in Toxic Linfen is the health of the Chinese nationalized coal industry and China's efforts on Beijing.

Generation M: Misogyny in Media & Culture (Trailer)

Synopsis of PH.D Thomas Keith's new film below.

Despite the achievements of the women's movement over the past four decades, misogyny remains a persistent force in American culture. In this important documentary, Thomas Keith, professor of philosophy at California State University-Long Beach, looks specifically at misogyny and sexism in mainstream American media, exploring how negative definitions of femininity and hateful attitudes toward women get constructed and perpetuated at the very heart of our popular culture.

The film tracks the destructive dynamics of misogyny across a broad and disturbing range of media phenomena: including the hyper-sexualization of commercial products aimed at girls, the explosion of violence in video games aimed at boys, the near-hysterical sexist rants of hip-hop artists and talk radio shock jocks, and the harsh, patronizing caricatures of femininity and feminism that reverberate throughout the mainstream of American popular culture.

Along the way, Generation M forces us to confront the dangerous real-life consequences of misogyny in all its forms - making a compelling case that when we devalue more than half the population based on gender, we harm boys and men as well as women and girls.

It would have been nice to see interview subjects that weren't all anglo-saxon. I'm sick of seeing whitey spew the same old diatribe about what they label Hip Hop at best, Gangsta Rap at worst. Rich coming from a whitey himself, huh?

I was just talking about Western society's celebrity obsessed culture with a friend of mine recently. We were lamenting how generation after generation of teenage girls emulate lifestyles of the same ten or so IT girls, who have the luxury to often buy their way out of any self induced problem.

Anyhow, I thought I'd put this trailer out there for discussion.

Street Legendz movie - Part 1 (video)

Here's a dope, cleverly constructed, visual treat for Living Legends fans. A tour video, produced and directed by Sunspot Jonz and filmed by Todd Hickey and co.

Related Links:
The Living Legends on My Space

Dope "Graffiti Shanghai" video documentary

Found this over at the Universoul Productions blog. Yeah, you really need to check it out...

From Larry Charles, the director of "Borat" comes.....

'

Religulous

...US release date is October 3rd. I'll keep you posted when it's released elsewhere....notably Sydney....

Related Links

Disbelief

Dope rare old MTV doco on Rap Music...

...over at DJ Eli's blog...

Rare Milford Graves documentary

(Uploaded by PedroMendesVideos)

Here's part one of a very cool documentary on this free jazz drumming great.


Related Links:

A Fireside Chat with Milford Graves

All City pt 1/3

(uploaded by JiveSpencer)

Check out the first installment of this classic Henry Chalfant documentary from 1983, on the early days of Hip Hop Culture
in the South Bronx, New York.

Maestro: Larry Levan & early DJ culture pt 1/9

(Uploaded by Caligulalia)

Having been engrossed in the must read Last Night A DJ Saved My Life, since picking it up a few weeks back...

The documentary above entitled Maestro (released in 2003) is a great, insightful, rare, thorough look at the origins of DJ/Dance/Club culture.

Arguably, it may be the visual equivalent to the last few chapters i've devoured in Bill Brewster's and Frank Broughton's unsurpassed written look back at the characters, genres and innovations that have taken place / formed over (what was in 2006) 100 years of the artform of DJing.

Toxic: Garbage Island - Part 1

VBS.TV accompanied the crew of a research vessel on a mission to check out the extent of damage that a patch of garbage (equivalent to the size of Texas), floating around for years in the middle of the Pacific Ocean (nicknamed, the Great Pacific Garbage Patch), has caused to the surrounding environment.

This is part one of their findings.

Video Mixtape

Chaser preview -24/10/07 - Unionists Commercial


Dubplate Drama Freestyle # 2 - Westwood, BBC Radio 1

Bobby Corridor has put up a stack of classic Hip Hop videos, including a doco on the fall of the Streetsounds record label and performances from BDP, DJ Cheese & Word of Mouth, Mantronix, etc.


Coldcut documentary - Sound Mirrors


London pirate radio documentary part 1 of 3

Props to all who posted these vids in the first place.

A terrible thing to waste

The Human Mind

"the Apollo legend"

Pic from Wired New York

"Hope, Harlem & the Apollo" first aired on "Into The Music" (Radio National, ABC) in 2006 and then again on the 1st of September this year. It went on to win a Silver World Medal at the 2007 "New York Radio Festival."

This brilliant, eye opening documentary on the world famous Apollo Theater produced by Sashka Koloff features interviews with James Brown (R.I.P), George Clinton from Parliament and Funkadelic, and hip hop legends Run from Run-DMC and Raheim from the Furious 5, to name a few.

The unseen Iran

It's worth taking some time out to view Rageh Omaar's journey into the real Iran, 'Welcome To Tehran'. It is insightful, eye opening and a much needed look at a country that has been tainted by the light in which it is portrayed on western television news and current affair reports.

The first part of the series screened on ABC TV's Compass program last night.

Here is the BBC press release.

Ghost (trailer)

An Underdog Pictures production.

Foundations (trailer)

Figure most have already seen the trailer, so this is for those who haven't.



Film synopsis below (courtesy of Groove Effect).

'Foundations is an upcoming documentary about the art, graffiti, music, and club scene in 1980s New York. Post-disco era NYC was a lot different than it is today...for example, Times Square wasn't a giant shopping mall, it was the center of Hell's Kitchen and full of seedy porn theaters. Despite all this - or perhaps because of it - the NYC of the 80s would go on to define America's pop culture landscape like no other city had before.

I mean think about it - hip hop, new wave, punk, garage music, graffiti culture, and modern club culture all have deep roots in NYC. Many of these movements have gone global, so in some sense the NYC of the 80s quite literally changed the world.

Just got word from DJ / Producer Shan Boogie that this is his project - check his site here. According to the email, Shan has been working on this project for about a year and a half now and hopes to have a rough cut ready by September for festivals if all goes well. Definitely keep an eye out for it'.