rize

editing! it can create and it can kill.

create: the short montage of juxtapositions of krumping & clowning with old black and white images of african tribal dancing was inspired and fucking amazing.

kill: pretty much every other dance shot in the movie, most notably the ending clowns vs. krumpers competition. mostly i wished that lachappelle wouldn't have cut so many of the performances short. i have a short video of krumping by locals at venice beach. its a little handheld camera and its just music on a boombox, but its unedited and i love that. in some ways that's better than some of the stuff in rize because you see the whole arc of the dance -- and oftentimes there's a STRUCTURE to a krumping session. weird, but true. and lachappelle destroys that. i would have loved to have seen more of the clowning vs. krumping battle at the arena. unedited footage of la nina and miss prissy battling? who doesn't want that?

other than that, this was a solid movie. the narratives that they dug up were good, in showing that this dance and subculture that's sprung up around it gives poverty striken folks something to live for and do. and, based on his excellent photography and his not-excellent video work, its obvious that lachappelle knows how to photography the human body. he does that well here, showing the movement and speed of the dances.

note: i'm going to be done for about two weeks shooting skate videos in cincinnati, but when i come back, i'll be starting an ambitious new project relating to this blog. it's a surprise...