Main C, is fresh out of jail, and fighting to get out of the gang to be a father. Santos is lying low and wants to 'become somebody' again. But leader Keylow holds the cards to both their fates. A jaw-dropping insight into the Dutch branch of the CRIPS gang, as well as into the workings of the criminal mind.
On this peaceful suburban street in The Hague, every door seems to open onto a crime scene. Keylow shows us a room with walls streaked with blood: "it must have been a deal gone wrong", he says, because for the CRIPS, recrimination is usually calculated and clean. "It costs a lot to eliminate someone", says Santos, slamming a cleaver into a chicken leg, "you need to know a farmer to do it well. If you don't feed a pig for a week, it'll eat anything, even the bones".
"CRIPS means community revolution in progress", says Keylow. It's a 'revolution' born on the mean streets of the LA melting pot, and now taking over in the Hague, where Surinamese and Antillean immigrants feel sidelined by the white community. They make their money mostly out of drugs, they carry pistols in their low-slung blue jeans, and hip-hop and a sense of brotherhood drive their lives. "I didn't decide to turn gangster overnight", says Santos, "I was born into this". For Santos and Keylow severe beatings and cleaning up blood-soaked crime scenes were regular family activities.
"We are not homosexuals, but we do love each other", says Santos. Keylow is a master at maintaining this loyalty: Penthouses, bags of money and beautiful women await... Yet both Santos and Main C are determined to give the gang up. "At home (in Antillea), I'm somebody", says Santos, pacing the floor of the small room he has been confined to, ever since he heard he was wanted by the Chinese and the Turkish mafia. For Main C, leaving the gang is more heart-wrenching: "To be honest, you're a weakspot now anyway", says Keylow, "a baby is not an excuse for this".
In pursuit of his dream to expand the power of the Netherlands CRIPS, Keylow swaps chilly street corners for the sunny esplanades of L.A. "We're all brothers here", says one of LA CRIPS, "but this is not a lifestyle, it's a deathstyle". The stakes are raised and a door is opened. Yet for Main C, back home in the Hague, a door is closed. "My daughter she had an accident... she's brain dead", he sobs. Keylow is quick to respond to the opportunity: "If I were you I would be angry with everyone, I would want to hurt someone", says Keylow.
With these words, Keylow is back in the gang: he dons the same blue uniform, but wears a new, steely stare: "CRIPS for life", he says. This breathtaking documentary, pulsates with a hip-hop soundtrack, and each blistering second flirts between life, death, love, hate, getting out or getting caught.
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 - Youth Jury Award - IDFA, 2009
- Locarno Film Festival - 2009
Co-produced by Revolver Media
Pieter Van Huystee Film
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| Making the film |
"I came into contact with the author of the book 'Crips.nl', Saul van Stapele. He introduced me to the CRIPS, but the film is not based on the book. The book tells the stories of the past. I read it and wanted to develop something about the character of Main C. He shot a man at point-blank range with a shotgun. I decided to build the film around his character." |
| The Producers |
When Mags Gavan joined forces with Joost van der Valk, they dedicated their careers to making hard-hitting films that provoke change and engage discussion. Producing their own films under RedRebel Films they began making cutting edge current affairs documentaries such as 'Kashmir' (about the independence struggle in Indian Kashmir) and 'Piracy' (about Pirates in the Malacca Straits). In late 2007 they discovered children were being murdered and tortured in the Niger Delta because of witchcraft accusations, a realisation which was to become 'Saving Africa’s Witch Children' ( A Dispatches Special for Channel 4, 2008). The film won the British Academy Award (BAFTA), the Amnesty Media Award, and an international Emmy Award. |
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