FIRMEZA TOTAL
São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro 2005Koolhaas:
“A documentary about hip hop in Brazil. I had won a competition organized by Black Soil Film Festival in Rotterdam. The film I submitted was my graduation inspired by my recent trip to Sao Paulo while doing a woodworking project. My graduation project was mobile recording and video production studio in a van that could visit different favelas. I had made an animation called the tower of hiphop showing the contrast between hiphop in the first world and in the third world. In the end a rapper who has made it in the first world drops the mike down the tower to let the third world be heard.”
“The prize was a small sum of money to film a documentary about hiphop.
I had seen how strong the hiphop culture was in Sao Paulo so I decided to go to Brazil but needed help. I invited Dre Urhahn who had years of experience travelling around the world with friends, filming their television program called Gamekings.
On an earlier trip I had become friends with Junior who’s father owned a record label, Zambia Phonographica. It happend to be the label who signed Racionais Mc’s. The most influental rap group in Brazil. Even now in 2017. Junior introduced us to their producer, Edi Rock. Our plan was to find rappers who weren’t very well know and use MTV as a platform to showcase them. We needed a beat to have them rap over so we asked Edi Rock. He made two beats using Brazilian samples. We spent a month visiting rappers in rio and Sao Paulo. We would play the beats on our phone for them to rap over. Everything was brought back to Edi Rock’s studio where he put it together. The first part of the film shows us making the video. Then we show the video of everyone rapping over the two tracks Edi Rock made with the rappers. The documentary was aired on MTV holland and Brazil and played at several festivals.
The original concept for the film was Videotrip to Brazil where we would show ourselves filming these videoclips. When we were editing we decided to keep ourselves out of it.”