Focusing on a theme of "Urban Commons", the film this week includes: Style Wars: The Original Hip Hop Documentary (Tony Silver, 1982).
Produced in collaboration with renowned graffiti photographer Henry Chalfant, Style Wars is regarded as an indispensable document of New York Street culture of the early '80s, a filmic record of a golden age of youthful creativity that exploded into the world from a city in economic crisis. Representing New York’s ramshackle subway system as a graffiti artist’s public canvas and public policy battleground, the film portrays a number of the young artists at work, juxtaposed against the official positions -- voiced by Mayor Koch, the police, and other city officials -- who contend the graffiti is vandalism. A loving portrait of street culture, and the spatial politics informing this early 80s culture, the film ultimately leads to a climactic head when graffiti is “discovered” by the art market, and moved inside to galleries, providing a visceral, visual, and auditory chronicle of the first wave of gentrification and the forces of economic “revitalization” which rocked New York and transformed its cultural landscape. Style Wars won the Grand Prize for Documentaries at the 1983 Sundance Film Festival, and is regarded as an indispensable document of New York Street culture of the early ’80s, the filmic record of a golden age of youthful creativity that exploded into the world from a city in crisis.
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During the winter quarter, the Wednesday Night Cinema Society will present works which deal with the urban landscape, exploring themes related to urban spatialities, human geography, the commons, gentrification and the temporalities of change. This quarter’s programming is curated by UC Santa Cruz Film and Digital Media PhD student Samuael Topiary, and draws from her ongoing academic research on landscape, environmental urbanism, the commons, and utopian imaginaries.
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Free and open to the public
Parking $3 in Core West Parking Structure