Synopsis
"Style Wars" (1984) is the essential hip-hop documentary — watch it online on iFILM. Director Tony Silver and producer Henry Chalfant spent years tracking New York City's subway graffiti writers: Cap, Skeme, Daze, Dondi, Lady Pink, and dozens more who were turning the transit system into a rolling exhibition nobody commissioned.
The film catches the culture at the exact moment the city was trying to kill it. Mayor Ed Koch declared war on graffiti and the MTA poured money into anti-graffiti paint — the writers kept painting anyway. Shot in 1982 and first broadcast on Channel 4 in Britain, it claimed the Sundance documentary grand prize in 1984.
Two decades later, it was still pulling crowds at Tribeca and the Edinburgh International Film Festival. Not because it aged well in a nostalgic way — because what it documented turned out to matter. Stream "Style Wars" online on iFILM.
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