PARK CITY, Utah, Jan 27, (Agencies): Two documentaries that cast eyes back to South African apartheid and speak to music’s healing power have shared the spotlight at the Sundance Film Festival this week among a wide selection of movies about songs, singers and musicians. Nonfiction films “Something From Nothing: The Art of Rap,” in which rapper and actor Ice-T interviews Eminem, Nas, Snoop Dogg and others about the roots of hip hop, and “Shut Up and Play the Hits,” about LCD Soundsytem’s last concert in New York, have focused on music. “Filly Brown,” about a female hip hop artist, “California Solo” in which Robert Carlyle plays a washed up rock star, and “I Am Not A Hipster,” about a tortured singer songwriter, were among fictional films about the lives of musicians. But it was singer-songwriter Paul Simon who captured the media spotlight with the premiere of documentary “Under African Skies,” and another nonfiction film “Searching for Sugar Man” that wowed crowds here. Both of them are linked to South Africa. “Under African Skies,” recounts the making of Simon’s groundbreaking 1986 album “Graceland” and shows Simon returning to South Africa where he recorded much of the acclaimed record that sparked controversy for breaking a cultural boycott of that country due to apartheid policies.

Footage
The film shows footage of original recording sessions from “Graceland” in South Africa and chronicles Simon’s 2011 reunion with the album’s musicians for a 25th anniversary concert. The film makes the case that the album and resulting concert tour were overwhelming forces in bringing together people of various races and that political attacks against Simon by groups including the African National Congress were unwarranted. “The ‘Graceland’ phenomenon really came from a musical source and didn’t have an overt political point of view,” Simon told the Sundance audience about recording in South Africa. “I am actually saying, ‘I have no regard for the structures of apartheid, I am here purely on a musical basis.’”
The film cuts back-and-forth between Simon’s 2011 reunion trip and the original “Graceland” recording sessions, offering insight into how hit songs like “You Can Call Me Al” were assembled after Simon was inspired by South African music groups including Ladysmith Black Mambazo.

“My first impulse was to go where the music was and the musicians that I wanted to play with, and I didn’t know how it was going to come out,” Simon, now 70, told the audience. “What happened with Graceland in becoming a worldwide hit was that the traditional music of South Africa became hip all over the world and South Africa began to take pride in what was a musical form that they considered old hat, really,” he said. In stark contrast to Simon’s success as an artist, there is the story of an obscure, 1970s Detroit folk singer known as Rodriguez, who is the focus of “Searching for Sugar Man.” Producers of his only two albums, “Cold Fact” and “Coming From Reality,” considered Rodriguez better than Bob Dylan with his poetic lyrics protesting racial and economic inequality. He wrote about a hard life on the streets of Detroit. His records failed to sell in the United States. The film about him has won standing ovations from cheering, tearful audiences at Sundance where many have said it was among the best movies they had seen.

“Searching for Sugar Man” begins in South Africa where the folk singer’s song, “Sugar Man”, was banned on the radio and he became an enigmatic, cult hero in the 1970s to a mostly white, liberal crowd spurred by his anti-establishment message in their questioning of apartheid. Yet, after his two albums bombed in the US, Rodriguez faded into obscurity, never recording again nor knowing about his success in South Africa. A record retailer in that country, Stephen “Sugar” Segerman termed him, “bigger than Elvis,” and set about searching for the Mexican-American singer rumored to have shot himself or set himself afire on stage.

Journey
“It’s been quite a journey to make this film, it took five years,” said director Malik Bendjelloul who painstakingly uses grainy footage, animation and interviews to reconstruct Segerman and music journalist Craig Bartholomew’s quest to find out what happened to the singer and his royalties. The film’s soundtrack utilizes the folk singer’s songs. “We knew nothing, his name never cropped up anywhere,” Segerman said of the search. “There was a mythology around this man for 30 years.” And in a strange twist of Sundance fate, Segerman believes one reason Rodriguez’s first album never took off was because it was released near the same time as Art Garfunkel and Paul Simon’s seminal smash hit, “Bridge Over Troubled Water.” Hip-hop is making itself heard – and seen – at the Sundance Film Festival.

Along with a slew of performances by rappers and DJs around town, this year’s festival includes documentary and narrative films about hip-hop culture. “It’s a beautiful thing to see,” said Luther Campbell of 2 Live Crew fame, who stars in a short film playing at the festival called “The Life and Freaky Times of Uncle Luke.” ‘’When you look at the success of Ice Cube and Will Smith, these are traditional hip-hop guys that are very successful in the movie business, so it’s a great thing and I’m happy for all the other guys who are here.” Rapper-actor Ice-T made his directorial debut at Sundance with the documentary “Something From Nothing: The Art of Rap,” which features interviews with hip-hop artists such as Grandmaster Flash, Eminem, Mos Def, KRS-One, Snoop Dogg and Ice Cube.

Ice-T said he made the movie to give viewers “a better understanding of what it takes and what we do.”
“I wanted to talk about the craft, not the cars, the money, the girls,” the 53-year-old entertainer said. “How do you write rhymes? Let’s go into the songwriting process. And everybody was really excited because they were like, ‘Nobody ever asks us that.’” After interviewing his friends and colleagues on both coasts, Ice-T ended up with a four-hour film that he trimmed down to 106 minutes for festival consideration. “Our only ambition was to make it to Sundance,” he said. “This is a festival about art, and this movie’s about art.” Another film with a hip-hop focus is dramatic-competition contender “Filly Brown.” The film starring Lou Diamond Phillips, Edward James Olmos and newcomer Gina Rodriguez tells the story of a rising Hispanic hip-hop star and the challenges she faces on the way to fame. “Hip-hop, the soul of hip-hop and the foundation of hip-hop is just staying true to who you are and your voice, and so I think it’s really nice that the Sundance films are reflecting that,” said Rodriguez, who raps on screen. “We didn’t set out to make a hip-hop movie,” added co-director Youssef Delara. “We set out to tell the story of this young woman in music, and it’s just like hip-hop is so ingrained in our culture, and a lot of different types of culture, that you really can’t tell a youth story without some element of hip-hop.”

Hosted
The Sundance Institute Film Music Program hosted a concert at the ASCAP Music Cafe featuring Ice-T, Chuck D of Public Enemy and rap pioneer Grandmaster Caz. “Every year the films are so wonderful here and so diverse, and they keep adding new elements and experiences to the festival to keep it current and fresh,” said Loretta Munoz, producer of the ASCAP Music Cafe. “I’m very happy about ‘The Art of Rap’ and seeing how that goes forward.” In addition to the films and official music programs, various corporate-sponsored locations held their own parties with big-name rap stars. Common, a star and producer of “LUV,” a contender in the US dramatic competition, celebrated the film by performing into the wee hours at the Express afterparty. Drake and Wiz Khalifa each took the stage at the Bing Bar, and Drake also hosted a gathering at Park City Live, where Ludacris headlined earlier in the week.

Lil Jon took to the turntables at the Skullcandy Compound above a massive disco ball and Kendrick Lamar inspired the crowd to sing along at Sugar nightclub on Main Street, where Nas is set to perform Friday.
“Hip-hop changed the world,” Ice-T said. “I’m amazed it took so long to get here.” Meanwhile, Ethel Kennedy prefers coming to the Sundance Film Festival when she’s not the star of a movie. She has been to Sundance in the past to see films by her daughter, documentary filmmaker Rory Kennedy. This time, the widow of US Sen Robert Kennedy is the focus of her daughter’s film, the Sundance premiere “Ethel.”
Though initially reluctant when her daughter proposed the documentary, Ethel Kennedy opens up on screen with candid recollections about the family, including falling in love at first sight with her future husband on a ski trip to Canada. “He was standing in front of an open fireplace,” she said in an interview alongside her daughter. “I walked in the door and turned and saw him, and I thought, ‘Whoa.’”

Discusses
In the film, Ethel Kennedy discusses campaigning for her husband and his brother, President John F. Kennedy, the similarities and differences between her family and the Kennedy clan, and raising 11 children after her husband’s assassination in 1968. At the time, she was pregnant with Rory Kennedy, her youngest child, who was born six months after her father’s death. As a widow with such a big family, Ethel Kennedy said she coped simply by going about what she needed to do in tending her children.
“After Rory was born, it was – life just happened to take care of daily living, which almost had practically nothing to do with me,” she said. “I just started taking carpools in the morning, and by the time I was finished dropping the last child off, I’d pick up the first one. And then, you know, I’m putting on all the galoshes. Well, you get the idea.”

In “Ethel,” airing later this year on HBO, Rory Kennedy coaxes sweet, sad and funny anecdotes out of her mother and her siblings. The Kennedys recollect their mother’s devotion to steeping the children in world affairs, her mischievous sense of humor and her rebellious streak that led to run-ins with the law, such as the time she was charged with rustling horses after freeing some mistreated animals.
Through photos and home movies, the film offers an intimate look at the life of the Kennedys, the family relating how Robert Kennedy and his children slid down a bannister in the White House after his brother was elected and how the president once cautioned his fun-loving sister-in-law not to push his Cabinet members into the swimming pool anymore.

Grief
In front of her daughter’s camera, Ethel Kennedy is unable to discuss the grief over her husband’s death.
“When we lost Daddy ...” she begins, then tears up and tells her daughter, “Talk about something else.”
Rory Kennedy, whose past Sundance documentaries include the Emmy-winning “Ghosts of Abu Ghraib,” said “Ethel” probably was her most challenging film because it was so personal.

“I know my mother and she is just terrific, and I have such admiration and respect for her. She’s such a character, too. I really think she’s one of the great untold stories, not just because of all of the events she’s lived through,” Rory Kennedy said. “But also because she’s just such a wonderful person, and I hope that comes across in the film. She’s so funny, and she is such an inspiration to me. Our family knows my mother, our close friends know her, but to be able to share her with so many other people I think was important.”

In another development, the ailing US healthcare system comes under the microscope in a documentary at the Sundance film festival that tries to diagnose what is wrong — and suggests a cure. “Escape Fire: The Fight to Rescue American Healthcare” presents a picture of a sick, money-driven system, but argues that there is a way to reorient it towards patients while driving down costs. The documentary, which is reminiscent of activist Michael Moore’s 2007 movie “Sicko,” is in competition at the independent film festival drawing to a close this weekend in the ski resort of Park City, Utah.

“Many people feel frustrated by the healthcare that they receive now, but they don’t really understand what is wrong and how it’s broken,” Susan Froemke, co-director with Matthew Heineman, told AFP.
“We have a disease management system, not a healthcare system,” she added, saying the film aims to show the American people “that we have to find a new way to deliver medicine.” The cost of health insurance represents 20 percent of US GDP. Americans spend $300 billion a year on medicine — almost as much as the rest of the world combined — but are among the least healthy in the developed world.

“Americans and Europeans took a different direction after World War II,” cardiologist Steven Nissen, who features in the film, told AFP, calling the US system “profit driven, instead of health driven.” The film argues that the system encourages doctors to see as many patients in as little time as possible, leading to them over- or mis-prescribing drugs, rather than taking the time to properly evaluate patients.
“The goal was really try to understand how the system’s broken, how there’s an entrenched, powerful group in the private sector that doesn’t want to see the things change,” said Heineman. “But there are people out there that are trying to fix it. So we both want to highlight what’s wrong with the system, and show that people are trying to make it better as well.”

The filmmakers sought out doctors, academics and others who want to develop a better way of treating patients. They follow an injured and traumatized soldier returning from Afghanistan, who gradually manages to wean himself off of the 32 different drugs he had been prescribed, with the help of acupuncture. They introduce Dean Ornish, a doctor known for his work on preventing cardiovascular disease by changing lifestyle and diet, in a country where 65 percent of the population is overweight. The film also hears from the head of the Safeway supermarket chain, which has kept health insurance costs down by offering financial incentives for workers to do more sport or eat more healthily. But while solutions do exist, Nissen laments that drug companies are more powerful than ever, notably due to a law which has virtually done away with ceilings on election campaign donations.

“I predict that the assault on healthcare during the current election cycle will be like nothing any of us has ever seen,” he said, referring to primary poll battles ahead of the presidential election in November.
“It will be advertisement after advertisement. We have a battle to fight and in that battle we need weapons. And I think that film is one of the weapons we have.” Heineman added: “It’s an issue that affects everybody in America and there is so much fear and misunderstanding that’s come out of the debate. “We lost the moral compass when medicine became about money as opposed to about care .. What’s happening now is not sustainable. What’s happening now is hurting many, many people.”