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Documenting the history of hip-hop on film

Hip-hop scholar Martha Diaz looks back at how the culture has been documented on film over the past 35 years.
CBC Radio ·
Hip-hop scholar Martha Diaz recently helped to curate a festival of films celebrating the history of the culture in conjunction with the Academy of Arts and Sciences. (Jon Roemer)

It's been almost 35 years since the movie Wild Style gave the world its first window into hip-hop culture.

And since then, hip-hop has not only etched a noteworthy place in film history, it has used that space to offer important context to the larger social ills affecting America and the world's Black and racialized communities.

Right now the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is running a series to commemorate films that document hip-hop culture entitled Made You Look: Four Decades of Hip-Hop's Impact on Cinema. 

Martha Diaz is co-curator of the Made You Look series and she picks one film from each decade from the 1970s onwards that is an important moment in hip-hop film.

Find out more about the series here. 

— Produced by Ty Callender

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