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from mike hunt:
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This Is The Life:
From the filmmaker:
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Winner! Best Documentary Audience Award
Pan-African Film Festival 2008 Winner! Audience Award, Documentary ReelWorld Film Festival 2008 Winner! Audience Award, First Place Langston Hughes African-American Film Festival 2008 In 1989, a collective of young artists gathered weekly at a small health food store in South Central LA called "The Good Life.” Their mandate? To explore and expand the musical boundaries of hip hop. THIS IS THE LIFE tells the little known story of a group of teenagers, who revolutionized hip hop by innovating the very rhyme patterns, melodic concepts and lyrical styles used by many of today's biggest rap stars. While their innovations have yielded billions of dollars for the recording industry, the Good Life emcees have toiled in relative obscurity in the United States. But much like their jazz heroes of a bygone era, these street poets have garnered a rabid and musically sophisticated fan base abroad, with a cult-like following in Germany, Australia, France, England and Japan. This feature-length documentary, directed by former Good Life emcee Ava DuVernay, chronicles the rise and fall of an unusual family of artists, while examining their obstacles to commercial success. They all took different paths, but remain connected by the music they made, the alternative hip hop movement they developed, and their worldwide influence on the art form. “"This Is the Life" is so immediately and fully engrossing that it meets its ambitious goals for the viewer — to illuminate a paradoxically undervalued but globally influential LA-based music scene while broadening the accepted parameters of hip-hop — and without feeling lectured to. It’s rare that being schooled so deeply is so pleasurable.."This Is the Life” vaults into the upper echelons of must-see hip-hop documentaries: It’s smart, informative, and hugely important historically.” -LA Weekly “This Is the Life" is a sharp, thoroughly enjoyable exploration of seminal South Los Angeles hip-hop hotspot the Good Life Cafe. Written and directed by former cafe habitue Ava DuVernay, the docu is clearly the product of real love, bubbling over with enthusiastic performances and an indelible sense of place. The film's appeal is decidedly niche, as it makes few concessions to those not already well versed in hip-hop history, but those who are will delight in discovering it.” -VARIETY “This Is the Life" is a reclamation project for a cash-poor but influential West Coast movement that sprouted from the Good Life, a South L.A. health food store. A rich narrative of praise, clarification, brother-and-sisterhood and the birth of a cool.” -LA Times "Upon watching this film, a time-honored hip hop statement rings loudly - 'If you don't know, now you know.' This is a story that has been missing from our cultural consciousness. The LA Underground scene has been "slept on" and passed over when it comes to its important contribution to the hip hop art form. Their styles and language, as well as the gymnastic vocal twists, symbolize the highest standards of rhyme. This film keeps their highly relevant music fresh and in its purest form, letting the stories be told from the mouths and minds that lived it. THIS IS THE LIFE is exceptional, a documentary not to be forgotten." - Chuck D, Public Enemy THIS IS THE LIFE “Meet The Movement” www.goodlifelove.com From the filmmaker: Official website | Trailer | Buy the DVD | Hosting materials Tags: documentary, , music, Los Angeles, west coast, hip-hop, ava duvernay, good life emcees, cve, jurassic 5, cut chemist, pigeon john, alchemist No screenings of This Is The Life are currently scheduled. Host one yourself!
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