Style Wars (1983)

The Bible for the birth of hip hop culture!!

This documentary is timeless! Perfectly outlines the birth of Hip-Hop Culture on the streets of it's birthplace, New York City and it's boroughs.
It also captures the Legends before they were considered Legends...Rock Steady Crews own Frosty Freeze (RIP) and Crazy Legs as well as Graffiti Legends SEEN, DONDI, IZ the WIZ, ZEPHYR etc..etc...
Hands down the Bible of Underground Hip Hop Culture!
June 12, 2008

What a great buy!

you get so much bang for the buck with this DVD. Not only is the documentary fantastic, but the supplemental DVD has recent interviews with lots of the superstar graffiti artists, breakdancers, and rappers. Well worth the money!!!!! March 17, 2008

Old School

I had heard about Style Wars when i was in high school in 89', my friend had the hardcover book. Seeing the video just made me re-live those days of seeing trains with the fresh tags, and new drawings. I would highly suggest anyone who is into old school Graffiti then you must have this movie!!!!!! November 8, 2007

An Outstanding Documentary

Style Wars documents the early graffiti scene in NYC and places it in the context of hip hop culture and the city at large. The film does a great job of conveying the passion graffiti writers have for their art, but is less successful at bringing into focus the conflicts between writers, parents, and city government. (The writers are never asked directly, for example, why they think it's acceptable to damage public property in pursuit of their art.) Nor is the connection between writers and b-boys and rappers drawn explicitly, despite the considerable time spent showing dancing. Nevertheless, there is a lot of good material here and, despite the filmmakers' obvious bias, all sides in this conflict are treated respectfully. The presentation itself is also quite artful, particularly the opening.

In addition to an extensive gallery, the bonus disc updates the story of 1983's Style Wars with interviews circa 2002. Not only do we get the artists' thoughts about the technique and history of graff and its relationship to music and dance, we get to hear what it meant to them then and now and how it changed their lives. August 1, 2007

Much better than Cats

Art historians comb through years of research to find landmark events or works of art that launched a new era or genre. This documentary is that catalytic event for graffiti at the global level, and hip hop culture in general. The ripple effect that this documentary had across the world was amazing. If you were a kid in 1984, and your parents took you to the museum to see the World Graffiti Tour (I still have the poster) you went out the next day and spray painted your name on something.

After re-watching this in 2007, I noted something that I missed in 1984. The writers are plagued by CAP, the nutball renegade who is bent on crossing out all pieces with his toy throw-ups, yet they refuse to band together and resolve the problem. It struck me that although CAP's actions are antagonistic to the community of graffiti writer's, his principals are the same. He is putting his name up where it will get the most attention. On some subconscious level the larger graffiti community recognizes this and sees that by persecuting CAP, their hypocritical actions would place them in the same category as those that criticize and decry the merits of Graffiti as an art form. As an adult looking back at that time period, I was impressed by this unwillingness to turn against one who is basically on the same side, especially given the general opinion that New Yorkers had at the time of Graffiti writers being a destructive and violent group. I bet those New Yorkers are now longing for the days when kids carried spray paint in their back packs instead of AK-47s in the back seat of their Escalade. Personally, I would prefer it if the kids got the money for the Escalade from painting murals rather than slinging llello, but whatever. Right?

Truck Boy June 22, 2007

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