Above is an interview with Tony Silver discussing Style Wars, the PBS documentary that captured Early 80’s Graffiti and Hip Hop culture. Mr. Silver co-directed Style Wars with Henry Chalfant. The film perfectly details this buoyant era. Style Wars first aired on National TV in 1983 and basically spread this NYC culture beyond the coasts. Places like Birmingham, Alabama had new graffiti problems . Kids in the sticks picked up cans, writing names like Mare2 and Daze2. The video was just so dynamic. It had the writers painting in the Subway yards, then later seeing their work run all of America’s most populated city. It had the beefs. It had graffiti entering the gallery world as the hippest things out during Blondie’s heyday. It had Mayor Koch and MTA fighting against graffiti. All the players of this time are shown in a quite beautiful, spellbinding manner that earned Style Wars the Grand Prize for Documentaries at the Sundance Film Festival in 1984.
Tony Silver passed away last Friday from the culmination of an ongoing brain condition.
Watch Style Wars:Here