A love letter to a neighborhood that nurtured a new black arts movementAn intimate portrait of the black arts movement that
Nelson George.
A FilmBuff
exploded in Fort Greene from the mid 1980's through the 90's as told by writer, historian and Brooklyn resident
Community is such an important feature of this film and we love that “Brooklyn Boheme” places it at the forefront. So many of the artists who converged in Fort Greene collaborated with each other (as witnessed in the films of Spike Lee) – the bonds they forged are still strong today, further reinforcing the neighborhood’s artistic importance and impact. The doc shows us the significance of Fort Greene and what a neighborhood can mean in cultivating cultural influence beyond its borders and, more importantly, it teaches us that the artist does not work alone.
In 2004, George made a short film called To Be a Black Man, starring Samuel L. Jackson, and a documentary called A Great Day in Hip-Hop. Both titles appeared in festivals in New York, London, and Amsterdam. He executive-produced the HBO film Everyday People which also debuted in 2004 at the Sundance Film Festival.
George grew up in Brooklyn, New York. His parents divorced when he was a young boy, and young Nelson was raised by his mother; his literary ambitions manifested themselves early on. "At the age of three," he wrote in a biographical essay distributed by his publisher, "my mother taught me my ABC's and I was reading before I entered the first grade."
"Fortunately for me, she had a relationship with a guy she went out with for about seven years. He taught me how to shoot a layup, but more important, the interaction between my mother and him was always very affectionate and very warm. I got a lot out of that that was subliminal, a lot to do with respect for women. So much of that respect comes from seeing how your father, or an adult male, deals with women on an individual basis."
Dismayed by the increasingly violent and cynical content of much rap music but opposing any kind of external censorship, he helped recruit a number of hip-hop artists--among them KRS-One, Chuck D. and Flavor Flav of Public Enemy, Kool Moe Dee and M. C. Lyte--for "Self-Destruction," a single that counseled against violence and drugs and stood in favor of education and community survival. The record became Billboard's top rap single of the year and sold half a million copies. "The idea is unity," George explained in the Boston Globe. "These were very disparate rappers, but they came together as a community. One of the words rarely used anymore is `brotherhood'--and that's what we're aiming for." George, who has long argued that rap can serve as a tool for communication and education, edited a book to accompany the recording; Stop the Violence: Overcoming Self-Destruction put the song's argument into cogent prose.
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