Mountain FogRETROSPECT: STYLE WARS (1983)
March 31st 2009 07:38
Style Wars packs some amazing artwork into its 70 minutes.
In the late 1970s, a massive musical and cultural phenomenon was sweeping through the Bronx. Hip hop had arrived and a clutch of top DJs were slicing up the northern borough like a Conti’s Boston Crème pie. The firestorm that was the birth of hip hop soon looked for fresh pastures to set ablaze and by the early 1980s the fledgling movement was making its way over the Henry Hudson Bridge and into New York proper.
As it spread throughout the five boroughs and beyond, hip hop quickly came to be known by its four essential elements of MCing, DJing, break dancing and graffiti. It was this quartet of components that director Tony Silver and producer Henry Chalfant looked to capture in their 1983 documentary, Style Wars, and the result is an intimate look at a burgeoning sub-culture that challenged the artistic and social conventions of the time, long before it was hijacked by bi-coastal bravado and hackneyed major record labels.
But while all four elements are covered in Style Wars, by far the most time is dedicated to the expressive, complex and illegal works of the graffiti artists (managing to make even Crazy Legs and his infamous Rock Steady Crew a secondary consideration). The filmmakers follow writers on tagging runs as they descend into Manhattan’s underground tunnels or jump fences into train yards in preparation for their works of aerosol driven dexterity. What would emerge the next day in underpasses and on the side of cross-island subway carriages would be a new visual language as graffiti artists attempted to express their individuality. Through Style War’s 70 minutes, Silver and Chalfant introduce the audience to many of the artists, so we meet the gregarious ‘Seen’, a tagger with an exceptional gift for three dimensional shading, Dondi, who visualises his works in terms of size and total impact, and Case, who manages a sublime and evolutionary avant-garde approach even though an accident cost him one of his arms. Throughout the film the audience is also introduced to the young men’s major opposition, led with energy by Mayor Ed Koch, who is determined to stamp out the graf artists through just about any means possible.
It’s natural drama that the film makers have tapped into, as graffiti artists run a forever more dangerous gauntlet to see their works come to fruition, while Koch, the police and the New York Transit Authority go to ever increasing lengths to stop them. Adding to the turmoil is Cap, a renegade ‘bomber’ who targets the intricate work of graffiti artists, defacing them with his own simple and quickly done ‘Cap’ tags. In the battle that was unfolding in front of Silver and Chalfant’s lenses, Cap was the renegade who, instead of choosing to express himself through art, chose the more iconoclastic route of saturation, bombing as many pieces as possible to see his name spread throughout the city in ugly bombast. Cap himself in the documentary describes it as a ‘blood war’ and saw it as his sole mission to destroy the art of people he didn’t even know, causing much consternation and frustration among the artists.
Style Wars is fantastic street-level documentary making. Having been fascinated by graffiti for a number of years, Silver and Chalfant had a lot of sympathy for their subjects and while both sides of the battle over public space are explored, there’s perhaps little doubt as to where the filmmakers’ compassion ultimately lies. The year that they took to film the documentary shows also, such is the trust shown by the interviewees; there’s a beautiful intimacy to it all, as the young subjects talk about their passions, hardships and need for expression. There’s nothing exploitative about the film, as Silver and Chalfant go to great lengths to illustrate the lack of a connection between graffiti, race (the artists come from black, white and Hispanic backgrounds) and violent crime.
The community of graffiti artists was a close knit one and they often came together to talk art and tactics.
Furthermore, the filmmakers did a brilliant job of adapting on the ground and finding real drama in the situations they witnessed. The conflict between the graffiti artists and the authorities may have had the effect of pushing the other hip hop elements into the background of Style Wars, but it lends the documentary an almost war reportage feel. Mayor Koch’s evolving tactics are discussed earnestly in underground artist meetings and strategies are taken to keep one step ahead of the Transit Authority flatfoots. Meanwhile, Cap lends a random element to the battle, confusing the graffiti artists while his ugly tags provide more ammunition for those who argue that graffiti is simply the defacement of public property.
The final result is an excellent documentary that captures the closing years in the early sub-culture brand of hip hop; a great example of a bunch of filmmakers being in the right place at the right time and knowing how to make the most of the conflicts that were taking place around them. Silver and Chalfant’s passion for their subject is infectious too, and by the end of the film it’s hard for even the most conservative viewer not to be excited by these young men and their audacious artwork. Held together by some considered cinematography and razor sharp editing, documentaries just don’t come any better than Style Wars.
Check out the trailer for Style Wars below:
Also, make sure you check out the brilliant Style Wars official site here.
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