Bling Hip Hop and blood diamonds, @BAM Thurs onl

REALLY good, at BAM for two days only -- I saw it tonight. A piece from the same material ran on VH1, but it was nothing like this...

Sep 5 & 6
Following its sold-out screenings at our Creatively Speaking program, Bling returns to BAM for an exclusive two-day run.

Bling: A Planet Rock (2007) 90min
Wed, Sep 5 at 4:30, 6:50*, 9:30pm
Thu, Sep 6 at 4:30, 6:50, 9:15pm
*Q&A with Raquel Cepeda

Directed by Raquel Cepeda
This documentary takes a hard-hitting look at how the flashy world of commercial hip-hop jewelry played a significant role in the ten-year civil war in Sierra Leone, West Africa. The movie follows three hip-hop celebrities: Raekwon (Wu Tang Clan), Paul Wall, and Reggaetón king Tego Calderón as they visit the capital of Freetown to meet the community and survey the devastation caused by the diamond mines.

Agreed, excellent and defintely worth seeing! Its too bad VH1 aired such a watered down version of the documentary and was not willing to show what is actually going on there and how people are being victimized and exploited ....

I would love to see a follow up on how the trip affected the hip-hop artists once they returned home any how it may have changed their outlook on the diamond industry and the exploitation of Africans who risk their lives and receive literally pennies for their efforts (while the European and American diamond companies make a ton). All for ostentatious, obnoxious looking diamond encrusted "look at what I can buy now" jewelry....

According to the filmmaker, those two guys who make the diamond grills have started sourcing their diamonds more responsibly, and Tego Calderón has given up diamonds altogether. I didn't see the VH1 piece, but I gather it focused more on the bling than the Africa trip.

One of the many mind-blowing things for me was how the image of US hip hop violence was adopted by the child soldiers :shock:

pitu wrote: One of the many mind-blowing things for me was how the image of US hip hop violence was adopted by the child soldiers :shock:

I plan on going to see the film, but what exactly do you mean by this?

pitu wrote:
One of the many mind-blowing things for me was how the image of US hip hop violence was adopted by the child soldiers :shock:

They showed that in Hotel Rwanda too . . .

BassPlaya wrote: [quote=pitu]One of the many mind-blowing things for me was how the image of US hip hop violence was adopted by the child soldiers :shock:

I plan on going to see the film, but what exactly do you mean by this?

A guy in the film says that if you go to some villages wearing a 2Pac tshirt, they will lynch you because 2Pac tshirts were adopted as the uniform for child soldiers. There's more in the film about this...a subtlety I'm not going to convey on a message board.

It was mindblowing (much of the trip was mindblowing) for the artists who made the trip to Sierra Leone to see the connection with US hip hop. The bigger issue is obviously about how diamonds become guns to fuel wars, and who makes the $$$, and the ravages of war. But what the film gets at is how we're connected in sometimes unexpected ways.