YAK Films

YAK Films is an American and France based video production company whose work includes music videos, hip hop dance videos and commercials. The company was co-founded by two youth workers and was incorporated as a privately held company in January 2011.
The company's stated mission from the outset was to produce "multimedia production as a voice of resistance and an alternative to the mainstream." They are best known for the viral video "RIP Rich D," commonly know as the “dancing in the rain” video, which catapulted the Oakland, CA, form of street dancing "turfing" to the international stage. On March 3, 2011 they were ranked the 18th most viewed channel in the world on that day on YouTube.
History
YAK Films was co-founded by Yoram Savion and Kash Gaines, who met while Savion was teaching multimedia production at Youth Uprising, a community center in Oakland, CA.
Savion, the son of an Israeli father and French mother, immigrated from France to Berkeley, CA, at age 17 and attended UC Berkeley. During his junior year he began an investigative project on youth violence, which led to his encountering Youth Uprising, a community center in East Oakland, CA.
Savion began working part-time at Youth Uprising, teaching workshops to inner-city youth. Two years later, after completing his B.A. in the self-titled major “New Media, Art & Social Change,” he would lead the community center's multimedia department. There he created public service announcements and content for the center's YouTube Channel he developed with Gaines, YU Media LP, which peaked over a million views in 2010. Those skills became the foundation for YAK Films. One of the student-driven projects Savion led was called "Youth Jail Chronicles," which were short videos in which young people told personal stories about criminalization and incarceration in their neighborhoods. The films were filmed and edited by three of Savion's students, Darmarea Bar, Demani Adkins and Daeshane Moore, who won the Project Youth View, sponsored by HBO, grand prize for their work.
Savion and Gaines used their first initials as the acronym to name the company.
Gaines was born in Chicago, Illinois, but traveled over the U.S. as a child and eventually landed in Oakland, CA, where he attended Castlemont High School, adjacent to Youth UpRising. A dancer, poet and filmmaker, he became part of the Turf Feinz crew in 2010.
Ben Tarquin joined YAK Films in 2009 in Paris, when he and Savion filmed a street dance crew called Les Twins early one morning, creating a video called "Phone Home." Savion and Tarquin were childhood friends who met in California. Tarquin has added music production and graphic design skills to the company. Savion and Tarquin now live in Paris.
In 2011, French bboy Lamine, co-founder of the Vagabonds Crew, joined the team as a dance consultant. He has been promoting the presence of the company in international dance events and focused the team on bboying, the reference for urban dance world wide for over 20 years. Lamine began bboying around 1991 and is considered one of the most influential bboys on the world circuit.
Viral Videos
YAK Films started out producing dance videos with friends and students at Youth Uprising, but it wasn't until a video in late December 2009 that the world began watching. According to a story that has been repeated in the media, Savion had been filming a rap video for the local MC Mr. Smith one night when he noticed police lights, which he filmed to include in the video. The next day, he learned the police had been responding to an accident a few blocks from where he had been filming. A car had crashed, killing passenger Richard Davis, half brother of Darrell (aka Dreal) Armstead, a turf dancer and friend of Savion.
The morning after his brother’s death, Dreal and Savion went to the corner to film a memorial turf dance tribute to Davis along with three other members of Armstead's crew, the Turf Feinz - Garion "No Noize" Morgan, Leon "Man" Williams Jr., and Tee "BJ" Stevens. Savion edited the video with a beat by a local Oakland producer, Erk Tha Jerk, that a youth had passed along to him at the Youth UpRising center, and uploaded the video to his YAK Films YouTube channel.
Social Impact
A few months after Savion posted the "RIP Rich D" video on YouTube, it was shared on blog posts in Denmark, France, and Germany, garnering thousands of views. That led to local blogs, national websites like The Huffington Post and TV news like ABC News Nightline and television programs like Last Call with Carson Daly to pick up the story. The video has received more than 2.4 million views.
According to media reports, YAK Films has brought urban and specifically turf dancing to an international stage. "That corner has become the stage for a performance that has gone global - the dance phenomenon known as 'turfing,' said one news anchor. "And now with the Internet, they are influencing the global dance culture." Turf dancing is now a sought after element of international battles such as Juste Debout and World of Dance. Even renowned French street dancers Les Twins have exchanged with this dance style after meeting the Turf Feinz through their mutual association with YAK Films, which produces videos for both crews.
In February 2011, YAK Films launched a weekly "[http://www.youtube.com/user/yakfilms#g/c/5104C3DC0935CBF9 YAK Like You Know (YLYK)]" webisode highlighting the newest viral dance videos, and [http://www.youtube.com/user/yakfilms#g/c/455238F2C55F7629 dance tutorial videos] aimed at teaching dancers moves featured in YAK videos.
YAK Films and its directors have won awards including First Place at the East Bay Express 24-Hour Digital Film Festival for their film Golly the Rainmaker, the Southern Exposure's 18th Entry Free Juried Exhibition, a Special 2009/2010 Isadora Duncan Award for "exploring the world of Oakland youth violence through site specific dance memorials." They have created several R.I.P. videos for young men who have passed away or been killed on the streets or by police, including for Oscar Grant, who was killed by BART police. The music video they filmed for the group Los Rakas was showcased by the South by Southwest Festival.
Style
YAK Films’ video style evolved in a dance video market that ranged from lo-fi cell phone videos to big blockbuster movies. They have been recognized for their innovation as local youth media makers. The company chose to stay close to the streets in the dance styles it documented but used professional and high quality movie language to tell the stories of the dancers and their moves. This style is now beginning to be imitated worldwide as access to internet is spreading and the affordability of new media technologies is becoming a reality for more people around the globe. YAK Films has worked with dancers in the USA (Oakland, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, New Orleans, New York, Orlando), France, England, Germany, Switzerland, Japan and soon Denmark, China and Russia.

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