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Player Hating: A Love Storyby Maggie Hadleigh-West
USA, 2010, 95 minutes, Digital Projection
Half-a-Mill is a 26 year old Hip Hop artist making rhymes from the Albany Projects in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. He has a good sound, he’s talented and hungry to get out of the projects to make a life for himself and his family. But so is everyone else in the projects. Welcome to Player Hating: a carcinogenic industry affliction of jealousy and back stabbing that consumes anyone struggling towards success. With family and loved ones dying all around him, Half-a-Mill has to defeat Player Hating if he has any chance of making it out. Maggie Hadleigh-West’s unflinching vérité doc tracks Half-a-Mill during the recording processes of his first album and delves deep into the wild underworld of the recording industry. Life in the ‘hood is short, cheap and dangerous. The beautiful thing about this film is it emphasises this world we rarely see is the world that makes the music what it is. The film’s raw authenticity makes use of the exceptional access allowing a very rare insight into the Player Hating game and exposes audiences to the immense competition, courage and pain of existence artists feel on the social and musical fringes. — Sheffield Doc/Fest
“Player Hating IS NOT just another hip hop movie. Maggie gained unprecedented access and insight into the reality of ‘thug life”, and I believe that this is going to be THE DOCUMENT of a time and place in American life.” -Peter Sprier, Academy Award Nominated Filmmaker and CEO of Rugged Entertainment”
Maggie Hadleigh-West is an internationally recognized independent filmmaker, activist and an inspirational public speaker. She has been writing, directing and producing in film, television and for corporations since 1991.Her work is often considered to be controversial, provocative, radical and irreverent.
Maggie is particularly adept at creating original programming for television and the Internet, which is content laden and character driven. Her independent films, employ arresting cinematic styles and social justice messages. As a Producer for television, her work has included researching, writing and producing original segments for Dateline NBC, Life Time Television, Independent Film Channel and more.Maggie’s films and presentations have been used around the world in theaters, the Internet, broadcast television, cable outlets, nonprofit organizations, conferences, corporations, colleges and government agencies, including the Departments of Defense, Justice and State.
In 2009, 2006 and 2005 Maggie was an Alcyon Grantee, a 2004 New York State Council on the Arts Grantee, 2001 University of Louisville Distinguished Professor Nominee, 2000 Rockefeller Fellow Nominee, 2000 Tiny Tony Award Winner and nominee of the 1998 Caligari Prize at the Berlin Film Festival in Germany. She received a Bachelor of Arts degree with Honors in Visual Communications from George Washington University. She also holds a Master of Fine Arts with a Merit Award from the School of Visual Arts in New York City.
