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Breaking The
Rules |
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The history of counterculture has never been told in a cohesive way: neither in a form that appeals equally to all generations, nor has anyone explored the links between the different movements more intensively. Breaking The Rules aspires to close this gap. Breaking The Rules is a cineastic journey through time across 50 years of American counterculture, from the Beat Generation in New York and San Francisco all the way to the beginnings of HipHop in the Bronx. Always searching for the key moments that gave each movement its name, the film travels from coast to coast, encountering important eye-witnesses of the times. Enhanced by a captivating soundtrack (including studio and concert performances by Charlie Parker, Thelonious Monk, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin and others), compelling snapshots and exclusive archive material, their stories make counterculture come alive once again. Together with Ruth Weiss, Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Michael McClure, viewers immerse themself in Greenwich Village and North Beach during the '50s, in the clubs where jazz and poetry converged. They dream with Amiri Baraka and Melvin Van Peebles of a more righteous world in which blacks and whites sit down at one table as brothers; join the struggle with Anne Waldman and Ed Sanders against a war in Vietnam; cruise down the highways with Peter Fonda; celebrate the Summer of Love with Wavy Gravy and Ray Manzarek; and stand alongside Afrika Bambaataa, RZA, Kurtis Blow and Grandmaster CAZ to witness the first HipHop parties in the Bronx. As the film runs its course, the viewer encounters one phenomenon that links all of these movements with one another: the commercialization of counterculture. Breaking The Rules examines how, after an initial phase of mistrust and rejection, markets adopt the codes of counterculture for themselves and turn them into a part of everyday culture. Yet the term "counterculture" alone implies that it doesn't let itself be tamed so easily. It might appear to vanish for a while, though only to reappear that much more surprisingly from its burnt-out ashes again: underground and a whisper at first, then louder and louder. |
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© 2005 NEUZEITFILM |
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