“From Deep is like sitting next to your smartest friend during the game, the wonk with all the relevant stats and obscure facts, broadening the game into an exploration of wider cultural symbols and one's own involvement with them” - Christy LeMaster, CINE-FILE

Using basketball as an entry point into larger discussions of collective identity, race, and fandom, From Deep combines elements of the personal essay and the mixtape to illustrate the shifting relationship between social, cultural, and political forces and developments in America. Part cultural history, part reflection on the game as part of everyday life, From Deep unites two interrelated developments from the mid-80s which together propelled basketball to its prominent position in the American (and global) consciousness: Michael Jordan’s entry into the NBA, and hip hop’s movement from counter-cultural margins to the mainstream.

The parallel ascent of the sport and the music genre is traced through a vast array of clips culled from movies, music videos, news footage, highlight reels, and video games, and iconic songs such as Kurtis Blow’s Basketball and Run-DMC’s My Adidas. Providing poetic counterpoint are documentary “moving snapshots” of neighborhood pickup and streetball games around the country: from the small towns of Indiana, to playgrounds in Hartford and Akron, indoor gyms in Springfield, Mass. and Louisville, improvised makeshift courts on parking and abandoned lots in Cleveland and Pittsburgh, and famous outdoor blacktops like Baltimore’s Druid Hill Park and The Cage at West 4th Street in downtown New York, among others. 

FInd out more about the video essay HERE