It's December 6, 1969 and just like that, the 60s were over. It started out great, the West Coast edition of Woodstock. Santana, Jefferson Airplane, The Flying Burrito Brothers, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, a 300.000 strong crowd and, of course, The Rolling Stones on the final leg of their US tour. And, of course too, Hells Angels armed with motorcycle chains, sawed-off pool cues and $500 worth of beer, hired to stop fans from climbing the stage. And not in the least due to its proximity to Frisco, lots of bad drugs mixing with that crowd.

“Well, The Rolling Stones tour of the United States is over. It wounded up with a free concert at the Altamont Speedway for more than 300,000 people. There were four births, four deaths and an awful lot of scuffles reported.”

– Stefan Ponek, KSN Radio

Even before a single note had come out of Mick's mouth, someone had punched him in the head. More scuffles, Grace Slick begs the audience to keep their bodies off each other unless they intend love. The Grateful Dead, regular deployers of peaceful Angels security, wisely forfeit their performance. The Stones open their set, the final set of the day. By then, the Angels are far into their $500 beer bounty, and the audience far out of their mind. Meredith Hunter, high on drugs, had brought a gun. And the Angels did what they were ordered to: stop anyone from getting close.

There's something really peculiarly narrow-minded about the Dutch called “verzuiling”, “pillarisation”; society is split into vertical columns and depending on your background you join certain circles. You play soccer, join a trade union, or listen to the radio in a Catholic, Protestant, or social-democratic context. Deeply socialist, (for you American-styled liberals rather extremely) leftist, and seasoned with a generous dash of subversive underground ánd highbrow culture, Dutch radio and TV broadcaster VPRO belongs to the latter.

 

When VPRO radiomaker Bram van Splunteren came across Beastie Boys' rock/rap crossover 12” She's On It (from the 1985 #HipHop movie Krush Groove), he knew he was onto something and he would play the Beasties and other rappers on his De Wilde Wereld alongside Oingo Boingo and The Fall.

“Some people don't know rock 'n' roll came out the same way rap came out. People would say: No, it will never last.”

– Schoolly D

Despite the VPRO boasting about their leftie open-mindedness, Van Splunteren's embrace of such lowbrow, poor people culture (not the right kind of frugal-by-choice types but the low-cultured tracksuit wearing ones) didn't sit well with the broadcaster. Minorities boasting about their accomplishments, their cars, girls, gold? That's got no place in this social-democratic-Lutheran column!

 

Yet time moved on and Van Splunteren was given a budget to make a TV program about that weird talking-over-drum-machines music. With a small crew that included Belgian comedian/musician Marcel Vanthilt – who would sporadicly rap with his oddball New Beat group Arbeid Adelt! – Van Splunteren explored the music from the then-still predominantly Black neighbourhoods in the Big Town: the Bronx, Harlem, Queens, while Vanthilt interviews everyone available; from a boasting LL Cool J and his grannie to a very green Biz Markie and old old old skoolers The Last Poets.

 

Over time, this obscure 1986 Dutch TV documentary Big Fun in the Big Town has become an essential snapshot of hip hop culture. It captures an optimism and fire elemental to survive Reagan's America and highlights the urge to continue the Black struggle that the Panthers and others set in motion.

 

Happy birthday, hip hop. To many more powerful years to come.

In typical Western fashion the credits for William Klein's Festival panafricain d'Alger focusses on the French and American participants. After Algeria regained its independence in 1962, it became Africa's – and the #AfricanDiaspora's – centre for postcolonial and liberation moments.

“À bas le colonialisme ! À bas l'imperialisme !”

The 12-day Festival panafricain attracted 5000 people from all over the African continent, as well as liberation fighters from the United States.

“Clicks, clacks, riding the backs of giraffes for laughs, S'alright for a while, The ego sings of castles and kings, And things that go with a life of style, Wanting to feel, to know what is real, Living is a, is a lie”

– The Monkees, Porpoise Song (1968)

“No, Wagner! Stay in Hell where you belong!”

– Franz Liszt

Pretty boy Lonnie gets what he wants. And he wants to be out of where he came from, and he wants to be wanted and rich. And he's got the looks and the voice and the ego. So he gets it, the getting out and the love and the money. And then some. And then some. And then.

“It's not my fault that opportunity came my way.”

– Lonnie

Rat Fink is not your pop-idol-turned-movie-star vehicle. Something's off, no good vibrations here. It's dark – not in the least thanks to cinematographer Vilmos “The Deer Hunter” Zsigmond's doings – and gritty – real-world pop singer Schuyler Hayden doesn't hold back in his portrayal of egomaniacal pretty boy Lonnie.

 

If it hadn't been lost for half a century you may be fooled to believe that it spawned a certain, fictional 80s investment banker.

They say, the house always wins. In You the Better, the House is an unseen character. The other character – a constantly changing team of athletes wearing blue uniforms and caps and coached by artist Ashley Bickerton – play a baffling hybrid of craps, dodgeball, and roulette while arcade game noises and Brooke Halpin's catchy chants accompany the players. While You the Better suggests repetitiveness, a theme of winning, losing, and competitiveness reveals itself.

“HANDS UP PUT YOUR HANDS UP GIMME MORE GIMME GIMME MORE BETTER GIMME MORE”

– recurring chant

You the Better is part of Beckman's The Super-8 Trilogy, a multimedia art project that explores play in Western society.

The opera world is in mourning. Edmea Tetua, the greatest singer of all time, has passed away. On a grande ocean liner, her friends, colleagues, admirers have come together to scatter Edmea's ashes near Erimo, the island where she was born.

“This is the funny thing abut sea voyages. After a few days, you feel as if you'd been sailing forever. You feel you've always known your fellow voyagers.”

During a tour of the ship, the passengers visit the boiler room where – urged on by the engine room crew – an impromptu operatic competition unfolds, all to the pulsating rhythm of the steamliner's bloated belly.

In this #supernatural Filipino melodrama, it being a Filipino melodrama, the town's muse tragically drowns, taking her newborn child with her. The orphaned baby floats down the river then is picked up by an older, childless couple who gladly raise her as their own. The child has a strange attachment to the #Pasig river where at night, a mysterious spellbinding voice sings the #kundiman [traditional love song] Mutya ng Pasig.

 

While Mutya ng Pasig is a lovely, somewhat predictable mystery by Richard Abelardo, it's well worth your time on a slowly meandering, hot summer night.