Our weekly focus on the moving image and art in the streets. And other oddities.

Now screening :

1. ELLE by DEGA Films – “Wild in the Streets”
2. Royce by DEGA Films – “Wild in the Streets”
3. ESOW, AIKO, KAMI & SASU: Tokyo Art In The Streets MOCAtv
4. ARYZ X FineArts Magazine

BSA Special Double Feature:

The Premiere of ELLE and Royce
Latest releases from DEGA Film series “Wild in the Streets”

BSA Film Friday is proud to premiere not one but TWO new videos this week from the 6 mini-doc series begun by Dega Films two years ago. “The goal of the series is to give the viewer a general glimpse of how the artists work in their environment and their works themselves from a first‐person point of view,” say the Atlanta native founders who settled into the neighborhood of Bushwick, Brooklyn a couple of years ago. That was good time to witness the autonomous street art and graffiti scene that was pumping new stuff out weekly. and the film makers sought out and convinced various Street Artists to allow themselves to be followed and filmed in studio and on the street while doing their work, legal and illegal.

Free of verbal narration the videos concentrate on the actions and place of the artist in a fishbowl of human activity swimming all around them. The selections for soundtrack are increasingly dramatic to build a certain wild tension with the action – perhaps to paint the dramatic cat-and-mouse scenarios that dance in the head of the subject as they lurk in darkness  and shadow; at war with / at play with the rest of the world.  The most impressive scenes are when there is no music at all, and only the ebbing-flowing of street noise.

This weekend you will have the opportunity to witness a rare running of all 6 parts projected live on the streets! In a box truck fitted with a projector, Dega Films and Breaker Films will be hitting Williamsburg, Bushwick and DUMBO Saturday night and Little Italy Sunday night (free pizza while supplies last). To find out how to hook up with them on the street for some guerilla projecting follow them on Instagram @dega_films.

ELLE by DEGA Films – “Wild in the Streets”

Royce by DEGA Films – “Wild in the Streets”

Tokyo Art In The Streets MOCAtv

While in Norway this month we intersected a few times with Kenichi Yamamura, a film maker from Osaka who was shadowing every move of Toulouse based Street Artist TILT with his camera. Both he and his buddy plan to put out a 10 minute documentary on TILT later this year, which we hope to premiere here for you.

Ken also shared with us this very well done documentary he produced a little while ago with
Director Shinsuke Tatsukawa and Assistant Director Masashi Nagara about the scene in Tokyo, and they trace the path of a number of people who make art on the street there as well. ESOW, AIKO, and the duo KAMI & SASU all speak about the culture and the compelling forces that put them out in the street with paint in hand.

The attention here to small details, textures, composition, and the rhythm of the street quickly transports the viewer – and you become engrossed in the scene at the ground level.  Before you know it, this razor sharp story is over, and you realize how the creators’ thought process and storytelling has carried you gently to the end.

ARYZ X FineArts Magazine

Listen to Street Artist/ fine artist ARYZ as he contrasts his work in studio and on enormous walls here. He also speaks candidly about a few economic realities that enter into his equation when pursuing a career and he sheds some unfavorable light on people he calls parasitic who misrepresent themselves when inviting artists to participate in Street Art festivals.

“Some of these guys try to sell the idea that they are supporting this kind of ‘culture’ and in fact the last thing they care about is the artist.  These kind of people appear well in front of institutions because they are kind of cheap and they pay nothing to the artist,” he observes.

The Spanish artist also lays plainly the relationship between putting his art on walls and the demand that it creates from people who want to buy his studio work, so clearly there are opportunities created by these scenarios for the artist as well. The lamentations and observations continue through the end credits about the demands of producing large quantities of walls to remain relevant in the mind of the public – and naturally there is the discussion of the meaning of the term “street art” versus “contemporary art”.

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