On top of my riveting encounter last Sunday with Asger Leth’s Ghosts of Cite Soleil, a doc about a sympathetic Haitian thug who fancies himself as a hip-hopper in the midst of political chaos, there are suddenly two other docs on the radar screen about bottom-rung hip-hoppers struggling in a tough environment. East of Havana, which was produced (i.e., paid for) by Charlize Theron and shown just recently at South by Southwest Film Festival, is a portrait of Cuban rappers that’s allegedy pretty damn good. It’ll be discussed by HE‘s SxSW correspondent Moises Chiullan in a column piece running tomorrow. The other is Australian director George Gittoes‘ Rampage, “an exploration of hip-hop’s musical innovations in a Miami ‘hood” that recently played at the Berlin Film Festival and then at New York’s Museum of Modern Art. I’ve just received a DVD of it and I’ll be having a look this evening and then a discussion with Gittoe about it sometime this weekend.