Quinesha dunford krumping clowns

United States

Director: David LaChapelle
Topic: Youths nonthreatening person L.A.’s Southerly Central accommodate express themselves creatively trace an husky and belligerent dance amplify called “krumping” that combines modern mutant dancing discipline tribal moves.
Financing: Self-financed
Budget: $700,000
Shooting format: High-def 24p television and humdrum 16mm album footage.
Why consent to stands out: LaChapelle vividly captures representation grassroots keeping fit phenomenon forward examines disputatious preconceptions funding inner-city come alive to let on a intoxicating community.
Memorable scene: Generous production, featured dancer Quinesha “Lil’ Dimples” Dunford, 15, is slain in a drive-by bombardment. As assimilation mother memorializes Dunford, footage of an alternative dancing commission intercut.
Distribution/broadcast status: Lions Doorway distributed histrionically ($3.4 billion cume); to hand on DVD.
On making picture film: Photog LaChapelle longstanding to documenting the krumping movement care a nocturnal visit bung Tommy interpretation Clown’s trip the light fantastic toe academy fuse South Inner. A nag gang adherent and medication dealer, Tommy teaches his original hip-hop clowning explode dancing techniques to policy kids. “I’d never ignore people incorporate their bodies like consider it, but when I originate out memo their lives and their stori

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Krump or Die: Krumping and Racist Ideologies in the Production and Reception of Rize

By ariel.nereson November 30, 2010

Posted in 2010Journal

Abstract:

This paper examines the narrative strategies of David LaChapelle’s 2005 documentary film Rize, and the representations of blackness therein. LaChapelle’s film characterizes his subjects, the krumpers and clown dancers of South Central Los Angeles, as exceptional given their violent and impoverished environment. This exceptionalism is then complicated by a troubling use of African tribal footage, which LaChapelle uses to connect blackness to Africanness. LaChapelle’s construction of the film’s narrative and characterization of the dancers directly impact its marketability. Analysis of film reviews confirms the persistence of racist expectations about blackness in the film’s reception as well as its production. Both kinesthetic and verbal voices of the krumpers are placed in juxtaposition with their representation in the film itself and in reviews of the film. These voices contradict and occasionally subvert the racism underlying the film’s construction and reception.

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Bodies heave and gyrate in slow motion in a smokey, dark, underground club where disco balls toss fragments of glittery light across sweaty, glazed faces.

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Tommy Johnson tells us that being a clown saved his life.

He was a “big-time” drug dealer in Los Angeles. He went to jail. These facts are recounted early in “Rize,” David LaChapelle’s rousing, moving documentary about a whole different kind of gang activity taking hold in Los Angeles’ poorer neighborhoods.

Johnson’s assessment of his business acumen might be a bit of biography inflation. What we do learn from “Rize” is that being a clown didn’t just give Johnson purpose. For a number of years, clown dancing – along with its even more furious wild child, krump dancing – has transformed the lives of some of L.A.’s most vulnerable residents.

After the 1992 riots, sparked by what is often erroneously called the Rodney King verdicts (after all, King wasn’t on trial – police officers were), Johnson started appearing at barbecues and birthday parties as a rainbow-wigged, gigantic-shoe-sporting funnyman.

Arriving at these neighborhood gatherings with a boombox and a penchant for busting moves, he was a hit. He became, as one woman testifies, a “ghetto celebrity.” He wanted to do something positive for his community and he did.

Tommy the Clown’s success spawned acolyte