Style Wars

(Tony Silver, US 1983, 69 min., 16mm)

WALL\THERAPY. Style Wars captures the look and feel of New York’s subway system as graffiti writers’ public playground, battleground, and spectacular artistic canvas. Opposing them by every means possible were Mayor Edward Koch, the police, and the New York City Transit Authority. Meanwhile MCs, DJs, and b-boys rocked the city with new sounds and new moves, and street-corner breakdance battles evolved into performance art.

Style Wars was awarded the Grand Prize for Documentaries at the 1983 Sundance Film Festival and is regarded today as the indispensable document of New York street culture of the early 1980s, the filmic record of a golden age of youthful creativity that exploded into the world from a city in crisis.

Presented in collaboration with Rochester’s art and community intervention project WALL\THERAPY.