This Black History Month gets off with a BANG as “UNDERWORD”, the first ever documentary focusing on the development 
of Spoken Word and Poetry scene in London, premiers at the Lost Theatre in South London, Wednesday 1st October 2014.
“Underword” is the vision of veteran Spoken Word artist Amen Noir, of the Best Kept Secret Spoken Word Collective. The vision was made manifest when he teamed up with equally veteran Hip-Hop artist, Gizla to form“Reel Black Media” – the teams visual media production company aimed at “representing a social construct documenting history in ART, through documentaries, short film, Spoken Word Video (Spokenology) and photography.”
Often, the history and development of underground artistic movements is difficult to locate. Such narratives often fade into obscurity as and where the so called“mainstream” begin to take interest in a culture and therefore define how the story is told from then on. Underword therefore aims to mend that breach, by documenting the development of Spoken Word during the 90’s, through mouths of the movers and shakers who made it all happen.
The 90’s into the early 00’s saw the Poetry scene in London truly come of age. Events such as Black Pepper, Soul Food and V.O.I.C.E became hubs for the development of some of the best Word Artists the world has ever seen. Not only were these artists fierce in word, but independent in spirit. The scene buzzed with Rythm, Poetry and Entrepreneurship as each artist invariable produced their own products from CD’s to books and eventually DVD’s. It was felt by Reel Black Media that this is story worth being preserved for future generation to know and be aware of what came before them. From Natalie Stewart (aka The Floacist of Floetry fame), Malika Booker, David J. El-Crisis, Jonzi-D. 3+1, shortMAN, Best Kept Secret, Zena Edwards, TY, Kat Francois and Beyonder to name but a few; all lend their voices to piecing together this history in a vibrant, humorous and insightful way. If you were there and part of it, Underword will be a source of fond memories. If you were not there, you will certainly wish you were.
The Reel Black Media team have built upon that independent ethos by self producing this monumental effort, which is hardly surprising. AmeN NoiR has a career 6 album deep in Spoken Word, with major theatre productions with Best Kept Secret collective and a The League of Extraordinary Wordsmiths DVD to his name. Gizla’s developed as a young man in group 50:50 to form Hip-Hop duo Nutty NRG, with long time friend Sky I, who together produced a slew of formidable albums and mixtapes including the well known underground smash “It’s Not All Harry Potter” and blowing up shows opening for many prominent Hip-Hop artist of the early to mid 00’s.
All of the above accomplishments are the result of self written, produced, packaged, managed and distributed efforts. Reel Black Media therefore represents the best in independent artistic endeavours, ensuring that the history is told by the people who made it.
Specially for the London screening you will be joined by The Floacist, David J, Zena Edwards and yours truly ShakaRa, as well as Reel Black Media themselves for a discussion looking at the themes raised in Underword as well as an all important look at the development of Black arts in the UK.
Underword London Screening, Wednesday 1st October @ LOST Theatre, 208 Wandsworth Road, SW8 2JU
TIME: 6:30pm-9:30pm
TICKETS AVAILABLE HERE: http://www.eventbrite.co.uk
For more information visit: http://www.reelblackmedia.co.uk/
feature by Tafadzwa ShakaRa Mbandaka / @ShakaRaBKS for the british blacklist