DUENDE
SHORT FILM
MAY 2024
NEW YORK CITY
CROWDFUNDING CAMPAIGN
After struggling throughout his entire career for his hard-won fame and success, hip-hop artist Sal is struck by envy when a talented young rapper, Moz, appears on the scene. Their conflict directly parallels the tale of 18th century composer Antonio Salieri and the mysterious demise of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.
While composing their respective masterpieces, Moz and Mozart prove to their mentors just how great they are, and Sal and Salieri grow increasingly threatened.
Moz’s rise in popularity makes Sal feel like a washed up has-been. Fearing his own protege's success is indirectly ending his career, Sal knows he must kill Moz.
Consumed by jealousy, Salieri comes to the same decision in an effort to salvage his own career.
Both Sal and Salieri face the historical repercussions of their actions.
The short play by Pushkin that inspired this film, published in 1832, seems all the more relevant now than it ever did. Artist deaths - especially within the hip-hop and rap community - have steadily increased in recent years, and this kind of violence is nothing new.
Our goal with this film is to use a historical context with which we're all familiar to directly address the unnecessary violence that is so prevalent today.
We all know what it's like to lose an artist we love. Everyone remembers how they felt when Michael Jackson died. You remember where you were and what you were doing.
That same feeling of loss happens more often to some of us, simply because of the genre of music that we listen to. We want to shed light on these kinds of tragedies that are more frequent, yet not spoken about as much.
We want to see a world in which being a rapper doesn't mean coming from a violent community.
A world where violence is no longer intertwined with rap directly.
A world where we can write our own rules that lift each other up, rather than tear us down.
This story is very personal for us…
Three of our founding members are musicians and rappers who come from backgrounds and neighborhoods directly affected by the consequences of this art. Being a musician or a rapper is already a difficult enough art form, but that difficulty is expounded upon by the trappings of this art. The trappings that range from the superficial to the deadly serious. From the cars and the chains to life and death.
We are exploring how our love of music, that was meant to unite us, can also bring us pain and pull us apart.
We are exploring how reputation, pride, and responsibility can ruin it all.
As we see in Alexander Pushkin's play from 1832, the trap is not new.
It’s not just a hip-hop thing. It's not just a black thing. It's something deeper.
Wherever there is genius, there is an opposing force.
We want to explore that force and how we can contend with it.