As a Los Angeles police detective, Don Cheadle provides a powerful engine for “Crash,” the 6th Starz Denver Pan African Film Festival closing night film. Cheadle – Denver’s not-quite-native but much-proclaimed son – will be on hand for the May 1 screening and to receive the festival’s SoulSpirit Award at the Mayan.
The hook for this year’s Pan African Film Festival is “I See Hip-Hop,” but its bass line could easily be “We make connections.”
From its Wednesday opening to Sunday’s closing, onscreen and off, the festival engages questions of community and art. Panels – among them “Revolutionary Rappers: Where Are They Now?” and “Wu-Tang is for the Children” – augment screenings.
Much like “Crash,” Jordan Walker-Pearlman’s opener “Constellation” takes seriously the interconnectedness and interdependence of its characters. Gabrielle Union plays Carmel Boxer, a young woman living in Alabama who has an affair with Bear
Korngold, a white soldier. He departs; disaster but also loving resolve ensues for her.
Truth, reconciliations and love are the themes mourned and celebrated when a diverse array of characters played by Billy Dee Williams, Rae Dawn Chong, Hill Harper, Zoe Saldana, Lesley Ann Warren and David Clennon convene in modern Huntsville.
On their smooth surfaces, neither “Constellation” nor “Crash” would seem to fit into this year’s hip-hop theme. Yet each is touched by the boom and bravado of a music that has staked a claim in American and global culture during the past quarter-century.
In “Constellation,” Billy Dee Williams’ character wanders into the neighborhood of his and sister Carmel’s childhood. A younger man approaches him. Their tentative then tender exchange happens as the movie’s only instance of rap music plays. This meeting of two black men from different classes provides a turning point that can’t be ignored.
In “Crash,” two men debate racial stereotypes in a car they’ve jacked. One pumps up the radio’s volume. The other, played by rap star Chris “Ludacris” Bridges, launches into a conspiracy theory on hip-hop’s nefarious roots.
Friday and Saturday, the festival pays special heed to its hip-hop theme when a number of panelists, filmmakers and performers take it to the stage – among them hip-hop chronicler Nelson George, Dead Prez’s M1 and Umar Bin Hassan, Donald Eaton and Abiodun Oyewole of the Last Poets.
Three films that take a different bite out of hip-hop screen Saturday: Stanley Nelson’s “Sweet Honey in the Rock: Raise Your Voices”; “MC2: How We Do It,” a documentary about the art and history of emceeing; and Adam Bhala Lough’s visually arresting feature “Bomb the System,” which gives the “8 Mile” treatment to a white New York City graffiti artist, tag name Blest.
Film critic Lisa Kennedy can be reached at 303-820-1567 or lkennedy@denverpost.com.
