Belly

Part of Made You Look: Documenting the Art, History, Power, and Politics of Hip-Hop Culture
Presented in collaboration with Queens Hip-Hop Festival and Cinema Under the Influence 



Dir. Hype Williams. 1998. 96 mins. 35mm. With Earl “DMX” Simmons, Nasir “Nas” Jones, Taral Hicks, Method Man, Louie Rankin, Tionne “T-Boz” Watkins. Celebrated music video director Hype Williams made his feature debut with this riveting American crime drama. Lifelong friends Tommy Brown (DMX) and Sincere (Nas) are pulled into darkness as each struggles toward a better life far from the streets of Queens where each cut his teeth. Belly is far more than an extended meditation on how drugs, violence, and easy money combine to destroy the African American community. With its rhapsodic visual style, Williams offers, in the words of scholar Thomas F. Defrantz, a “visual experience that extends possibilities for the medium of filmmaking toward the evocation of black visual intonation.”



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