Prism Prize Video: Classified - Powerless

By External Source

On May 13, the biggest prize for Canadian music videos will be handed out in Toronto. We are profiling some of the Top 20 nominees before that, including this clip from a platinum-selling hip-hop artist known for high-quality video clips. Slaight Music is Patron Sponsor for the Prism Prize.

Classified - Powerless

“I hope somebody can hear me,” a sentiment that loops throughout “Powerless” by rapper, Classified. The song serves to act as a voice to children and women who have experienced abuse and was a response to the very passionate response he received from fans after a social media post of his addressed the rape of a young girl in Newfoundland.

The video brings the song’s message to visual reality and from the opening shot (an elderly man tidies his disheveled shirt as a young, unclothed woman exits from the room behind him, he later re-attaches his clerical collar), you are immediately aware that Classified and director Andrew Hines don’t intend on tip-toeing around the subject.

While showing the various traumas that young women face, it also depicts the suffering of women in Indigenous communities, where there is a staggering number of women who are missing or being murdered.

To speak to this, the video was shot on Millbrook First Nation, a Mi’kmaq First Nations Group and features posters of real missing women in Canada.

Credits:

The video was directed by Grammy-nominated Canadian Andrew Hines.
It was shot on the Millbrook First Nation Reserve, which is a Mi’kmaq community located within Truro, Nova Scotia.