Slingshot Hip Hop

Slingshot Hiphop opens with a fast-paced montage that introduces the film's protagonists. The shots of the artists are intercut with archive footage of violence in Palestine, a daily phenomenon for the hiphoppers, and an inexhaustible source of inspiration. Filmmaker Jackie Reem Salloum followed various rappers who live in the Palestinian quarter of Jerusalem, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Tamer says that his hiphop band DAM is "30 percent hiphop music, 30 percent literature, and 40 percent..." at which point he tellingly points to the barred window and their frustrating daily existence beyond it. Just like the other hiphoppers in this film, members of DAM primarily rap about their political situation: they use their songs to make listeners aware of the injustices that Palestine suffers and urge their audience to make itself heard. Interviews with the hiphoppers of whom the female rappers have it even tougher because of religious traditions are interspersed with footage of occasional performances. The film's leitmotif consists of the attempts on the part of the artists in Jerusalem and the Palestinian Territories to make physical contact with one another, as they are separated by the Israeli wall. (International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam)