Jason Sondhi
In an era where full-frame DSLR’s are a dime a dozen and every kid with a half-baked script seems to be renting out an Alexa, it’s easier than ever to find a pretty image online. As curators, this is challenging—not too long ago whether you knew how to shoot a film was actually a fairly accurate measure for if your film itself was any good. Not so anymore, and the ease and cost of producing lovely footage has kind of cheapened its impact—if everything looks great, then nothing is special anymore.
As I too often do, this introduction is a meandering attempt to define a film by contrast—acknowledging my preconceived notions only to explain why they have been blown away. True to form, I raise the issue of the ubiquity of beautiful imagery in video and film to draw special attention to Raised by Krump and how it absolutely stands out from the crowd as utterly delightful to look at through its image quality, color grade and the ecstatic motion it captures.
Krump is an energetic and evocative dance form originating out of L.A. in the early 90’s, and this film serves as a loose documentary surveying its history through the lives and experience of individual dancers. It provides an intimate peek into the subculture and into the hearts of some of the style’s practitioners, whom speak of it almost as a form of religious practice—so deep is the spiritual release they experience.
It is also a journey of discovery for its director Maceo Frost, a rising Swedish star whom encountered Krump during a showcase at a street dance camp in the Czech Republic, and described it as a “goosebump” experience. Frost, it should be noted, is not a neophyte when it comes to dance. His father is a street legend, and Frost’s prior work has shown a fascination with choreography. However Krump’s raw expression, and the way the dancers describe the alchemical process of transmuting pain into beauty through dance, struck a chord with Frost, who flew down to L.A. in order to shoot over the course of two weekends.
Frost and Asselmeyer Shooting in LA
Frost provides much space in the final cut for discussion of how uplifting Krump has been for the subjects he interviews, saving them from abuse, poverty, and a life of crime. It is clear that Frost perceives a moral and spiritual dimension to Krump, and reflects that through his film—not simply through the interviews, but baked into the images themselves is a sense of uplift and devotion. Shot with an Alexa Mini, Frost and DP Robin Asselmeyer shoot handheld, and this, paired with slow motion, results in movements that float with ethereal grace. Subjects are frequently shot from below, peering up in rapt concentration. But, the most notable spiritual connection is Frost’s image grading. The director spent 5-6 weeks in After Effects tweaking the unique look of the film, describing it as a “divine glow”. It provides a halo of light out of the center of the image, suffusing the subject, and falling off into vignetting in the corners.
Raised by Krump had a limited, but stellar festival run, playing IDFA and SXSW among others before being released online as a Staff Pick Premiere. It is one of 3 high profile shorts to be released this month by BWGTBLD, a young production company looking to make a name for itself. Frost is a director on roster and is staying busy in the documentary space. He has recently finished a short film about a Ballet School in the slums of Nairobi, Kenya, and is also working on a feature film about women’s boxing in Cuba that he hopes will be ready by the end of 2017.