Rize

Music video director and photographer David LaChapelle bring us Rize, a documentary about clowning and krumping, the new dance styles recently invented by the urban communities of South Central Los Angeles in California where this phenomenon is incredibly big right now but has no coverage at all on TV.

Tommy The Clown is the pioneer of 'Clowning'. He's a real life clown who felt the need to invent this new movement as a response to the Rodney King riots back in 1992. Gangs is all we know about L.A., but Clowning is an alternative to them that is not about violence but about dancing and letting your energy move your body in incredible ways and speeds. And it's funny when the movie starts by telling us that the footage has not been sped up, but when you see it, it's really fast.
After the introduction of clowning and its major players, we go to its alternative. Called 'Krumping', it was invented by Lil C, Tight Eyez and Dragon, who used to be clowns but they left Tommy to make this new school of dancing, which is the same but a bit more violent looking, mostly because they don't wear the clown costumes and so they are people dancing really hard and fast and ripping their clothes off.
And then we get to the great Battle Zone V, the final showdown between the clowns and krumpers, all in a good way of course, remember these are not gangs.

I've never seen LaChapelle's work before, by a friend of mine is a huge fan and he thought the documentary could've been done by anybody else, with just little pieces of the photographer's work every now and then, specially at the end when even I could notice that it was a different style of filmmaking, and it was very good.

After the competition, the documentary goes into the private lives of the supporting dancers, and while it is still entertaining, I could've done without. But LaChapelle keeps giving us footage of them and their families, and I thought it was enough already.
Still, Rize shows us something almost nobody knows about, but that will probably become huge everywhere in the years to come.