Event

Rubble Kings

Sunday, October 16th

5:00 PM
RUBBLE KINGS

Directed by Shan Nicholson
From 1968 to 1975, gangs ruled New York City. Beyond the idealistic hopes of the civil rights
movement lay a unfocused rage. Neither law enforcement nor social agency could end
the escalating bloodshed. Peace came only through the most unlikely and courageous of events
that would change the world for generations to come by giving birth to hip-hop culture.

Government-approved policies, combined with record unemployment and the "white flight" of the middle class to new suburbs, left an entire class to fend for itself in the fringe neighborhoods of the five boroughs. With conservative estimates placing member counts in the tens of thousands, gangs literally controlled the new wasteland.

Influenced by traditional outlaw biker gangs, these gangs became the only effective law of the streets. Social workers helplessly pressed for peace as minimal police commitment failed. The Ghetto Brothers, loosely modeled after the Young Lords, mobilized for peace and unity. While the murder of one of their leaders during a peacekeeping mission put the entire city on the brink of war, the Ghetto Brothers decided to host a historical, city-wide peace treaty. By the following summer, separatist gangs, unified through the emerging, grassroots deejay and party culture that resulted, became the earliest voices of what was to become the hip-hop generation.

Rubble Kings, the most comprehensive documentation of life during this era of gang rule to date,
tells the story of how a few extraordinary, forgotten people did the impossible, and how their actions impacted the world over.