Breaking The Rules - Across American Counterculture
Marco Müller
Germany | 2004 | 94mins | DVD | Colour and Black & White
A cinematic journey into the world of the Beat Generation in New York and San Francisco, onward to what became the hippie movement, then right up to the embryonic rumblings of hip-hop in the Bronx and featuring rarely screened archive footage, studio and concert performances by Charlie Parker, Thelonious Monk, Jimi Hendrix, and others.
Despite the radical and even revolutionary nature of these movements and the times, the omnipresent pressure of commercialisation took its toll. Whether the message, the music, the clothes or the language itself, bit by bit they all became products and tools for mass marketing to the mainstream. Thus what started each time as a protest against the status quo ultimately became part of it.
Breaking The Rules returns to the roots of what was once protest. Hip-hop has concluded what bebop begun. American counterculture goes through constant evolution and rebirth. What form will it take on next? |
