PortoPostDoc

Hip Hop 50: A Celebration 2023

When I was invited to curate the programme honouring 50 years of Hip Hop at Porto/Post/Doc, I knew straight away what I wanted to focus on. I see Hip Hop as something much bigger than just a musical genre. It's a cultural phenomenon with urban roots, dynamic and in constant transformation, which encompasses countless disciplines and whose ramifications extend to various spheres of our current society (art, fashion, advertising, cinema, etc.). I've tried to ensure that the richness, diversity and dynamism of Hip Hop culture is well represented in the titles I've chosen for this programme. Over the course of five decades, we have accumulated a large number of documentary productions, and there is no doubt that other lists of equally valid titles could be constructed. In this section I've compiled some documentaries that can be considered canonical (Tony Silver's Style Wars) and new productions that cover many facets of this culture. The fundamental role of independent radio in spreading Hip Hop from its inception (Stretch and Bobbito: Radio That Changed Lives, by Bobbito Garcia), the importance of samplage and the construction of the beat, understood as the constant pulse without which this organism could not exist, the crossover between the street and R&B romanticism and a reference to one of the best albums in the history of the genre (Nas. Time is Illmatic, by One9). I also wanted to add to this list a contemporary look at the new incarnations of the genre (trap) with an excellent documentary centred on the ill-fated figure of Lil Peep, produced by Terrence Malik (Lil Peep. Everybody's Everything, by Sebastian Jones, Ramez Silyan).
These and some other titles that I consider a must-see for any lover of Hip Hop culture are included in this special selection though with Porto/Post/Doc in mind. I hope you enjoy them as much as I did the first time I saw them. See you at the cinema!

Guille de Juan