Joey Garfield:
Breath Control: History of the Human Beat Box (USA, 2002)
Production: Ghost Robot
75 min - Beta. English.
Breath Control is a documentary about how to make music with no other instruments besides just human voice. Unofficially the fifth element of the hiphop culture, beatboxing has often been left in the shadow of DJs, MCs, graffiti painting and breakdancing. Joey Garfield has been the first to document this spontaneous, expressive and often wonderfully hilarious way to make rhythm music.
Even if Breath Control is a film on rather a particular piece of an off-mainstream culture, it can be recommended to everyone, not just for the hip hop cognoscenti. Both classics and newcomers to the art get to have their say in the interviews and music excerpts, and this easy-going, honest and, thanks to the phenomenal skills of the performers, at times downright awesome film has conquered audiences wherever it has been showed. After seeing the film, it's very hard to resist trying how a drum kit fits in your own mouth.
