Fest Track On Sirk TV Film Review: AS WE SPEAK [Sundance Film Festival 2024 - Park City, Utah]

The perspective of words and their communcation to actions takes cernter stage in "As We Speak" [US Documentary Competition]. The doc uses the perspective of Bronx rapper Kemba in order to give a view on how storytelling in the rap genre is reflecting back on itself in certain ways. By showing the influence of black music in the past 150 years and how it evolved to the current iteration, the irony of what it shows is palpable, especially when it uses the legal system but also societal perspective to show an essence of texture which is both at odds with itself but undeniably authentic. Rappers are storytellers and, like most storytellers, they write what they have seen and what they know (though they don't necessarily have to have lived exactly what they say). The irony is, at least in their own communities is that, if it is isn't authentic, it will be called out. The interesting question the film poses it is the "literal" inrepretation iof lyrics in the legal system. Even if a rapper did not actually do any of things he or she has said in the song, are they liable in what it motivates other people to do? This is of course transformed by how certain communities function.

At one point, Kemba, who is now a bit older but not middle aged by any means, talks to a young rapper from a similar background in the Bronx who is trying to care for his daughter and be a good person but also has to exist in being the persona and has to put up a certain front. He does rap a certain way using epithets but also using certain contexts. And yet the irony persists in the lyrics. Like the recent film "American Fiction", it comes down to what sells and what people listen to. Kemba uses an old tech piece called a two-way (sort of like a pre-Blackberry beeper) to write his lyrics but it still comes down to perspective and perception and who is consuming it. At one point, he goes to a criminal defence lawyer to get a theoretical perspective before he recreates what might actually happen in the courtroom if he was put on trial...and the essence of how the system is stacked against those playing it. The fact that a public defender is handling a 100 cases at once with no support versus the DA who has many more resources at his or her back is telling.

The context of the plea deal is an interesting one because many defendants take that even if they are not guilty. It is a break in the system that is likely too far gone to be fixed. Kemba speaks to many performers including rappers in Compton and Atlanta who have been prosecuted for elements they possibly did not do. The questions is that new rappers sometimes create harder lyrics and visuals to get ahead as shown by the current drill rap culture which gets tons of clicks. Kemba even travels to London to talk to AXL Beats and a female rapper to show this is not just an American thing though that context is very specific regiment and idea because of our history. However because there is also a culture of more surveillance in the UK, that perspective takes on a whole different concept of privacy and rights. "As We Speak" is a wonderfully nuanced approach to the subject which doesn't dumb down what it is approaching but also show cause/effect and perspective through a rapper who sees the path but also those who take different roads. B+

By Tim Wassberg