 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  • Support Independent Reporting: #OccupyWallStreet (Thursday, October 13th, 2011)  • Coleen Rowley: We're conflating proper dissent and terrorism (Sunday, January 16th, 2011) • FBI raids of pro-Palestine activist homes in four US states (Friday, September 24th, 2010) • Summer 2010 Appeal (Monday, June 21st, 2010) • NOW AVAILABLE: Full 60-minute footage smuggled from Mavi Marmara (Friday, June 11th, 2010) • Gaza Freedom March calls for governments, civil society action against Israel in wake of massacre of unarmed activists (Monday, May 31st, 2010) |
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