Style Wars

Style Wars

Tony Silver and Henry Chalfant, 1983, 69´

With the abridged one-hour broadcast premiere of Style Wars on PBS and Britain’s Channel Four in 1984, the world received its first full immersion into the phenomenon that had taken over New York City. The urban landscape had been physically transformed by graffiti artists, who invented a new visual language to express both their individuality, and the voice of their community. Style Wars captures the look and feel of New York’s ramshackle subway system as the graffiti writers’ public playground, battleground and spectacular artistic canvas. Style Wars was awarded the Grand Prize for Documentaries at the Sundance Film Festival in 1984. In 2003 it has been newly acclaimed at New York’s Tribeca Film Festival, at the Edinburgh International Film Festival, and numerous other festivals.

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