Hacker Cinema
Style Wars
1984 · Film · documentary · 70 min
Directed by Tony Silver
Tony Silver and Henry Chalfant's PBS documentary tracks the rise and fall of subway graffiti in New York in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
3 positivefrom 3 commenters
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3 comments on Hacker News
For anyone that is a fan of hip-hop and interested in its origins I can recommend the Nas documentary Time is Illmatic (2014)[0]. I recently had the pleasure of catching the Nas & Wu-Tang tour and RZA said that Wu-Tang can claim nearly 30yrs of hip-hop's history. Noreaga said in an interview with Nas that he suggests people new to hip-hop start with Nas and then go _backwards_ in hip-hop's history to understand just how revolutionary Nas was as an artist to evolve and advance the form of rap.
I can also recommend numerous other documentaries such as Bombin (1988), Wild Style (1982), Style Wars (1983), Scratch (2001), Freestyle (2000), Martha a Picture Story (2019), 80 Blocks from Tiffany's (1979) and Beat Kings (2007) in no particular order.
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xdLDW6l7D8U
Style Wars "The Original Hip-hop Documentary" http://www.stylewars.com/site/
Amazing, gritty portrait of NYC in the 80s.
In the eyes of the New York City Government what Banksy is doing is vandalism[1]:
"§ 10-117. Defacement of property, possession, sale and display of aerosol spray paint cans, [and] broad tipped markers and etching acid prohibited in certain instances."
Graffiti is a Sand Mandala[2], it is art and it is beautiful because of it's guaranteed impermanence. If Banksy's vandalism wasn't vandalized or taken down or painted over it wouldn't be as powerful as it is. It is a symbiotic relationship like a flower and a bee.
To learn about NYC graffiti history watch Style Wars[3] a 1982 documentary on the NYC scene.
[1]http://www.nyc.gov/html/nograffiti/html/legislation.html [2]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sand_mandala [3]http://vimeo.com/14911708