Director: J.M. Harper
Producer: Sam Widdoes, Peter Cambor, Sam Bisbee, J.M. Harper
AS WE SPEAK: RAP MUSIC ON TRIAL
DOC NYC Selects: Winter 2024 Season
Date: Tuesday, February 20
Time: 7:00pm ET
Venue: IFC Center, 323 Sixth Ave, NYC
TRT: 96 minutes
NYC PREMIERE Filmmaker J.M. Harper crafts an astonishing cinematic equivalent of the blistering emotional force of rap music itself in As We Speak: Rap Music on Trial, a Sundance 2024 competition entry. Harper’s cinematic composition follows rap star Kemba surveying major artists in influential rap music centers including triple 2024 Grammy winning rapper Killer Mike from Atlanta, and more influential musicians in New Orleans, Chicago, London and Kemba’s hometown, The Bronx. Harper and Kemba uncover how rap has been not only irrationally demonized in the past 30 years and how racist responses to the art form have been used to secure unjust convictions in the U.S.’s carcel system, but how this disturbing trend is part of a larger 400-year history of the criminalization of Black music and Blackness itself.