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

Now screening:
1. 1UP – ONE WEEK WITH 1UP – THE SHORT FILM

2. 5 MINUTES WITH: MADC in the Maldives

3. Liberation for Black Trans Women / CANS Can’t Stant / The New Yorker

BSA Special Feature: 1UP – ONE WEEK WITH 1UP – THE SHORT FILM

Global brand 1UP continues to build their mountain of exploits and is smart enough to engage the premiere film director Selina Miles to tell the story. “I loved seeing so many people rushing into action all at once,” says veteran graffiti documentarian Martha Cooper as she relates the adrenalin rush of highly planned aerosol operations on the U-Bahn that she and Ninja K captured for this book/short film entitled “One Week With1UP”.

The risks are measured in the duration of rapid heart rates, multiplied by the long slow burn of anticipation and divided by the dull hours of strategizing, discussion, and planning. Cooper says she’s fascinated by the persistence of the graffiti practice over 50 years, and she should know because she’s shot the evolution of this youth-centered practice since she was a cub photographer for the New York Post in the 1970s. Miles captures the prevalent sensations of the cat-and-mouse adventurism running through this hormone-fueled grey cloud that floats somewhere between art, self-expression, pranksterism, and straight-up vandalism. By leaving the area grey, the viewer is pushed to draw their line about privilege, propriety, and its additive/subtractive relationship with the cityscape.

“It takes community and camaraderie, and skills and experience, and preplanning and all of that,” says Martha.

Big up to Spray Daily and Ilovegraffiti.de for sharing this.

5 MINUTES WITH: MADC in the Maldives

“Painting in these surroundings is unbelievable,” says graff writer MadC as she marvels at the natural beauty she is working in tandem with in the Maldives. “You are right there on the water, there are eagle rays right under you, fish everywhere, flying foxes coming…,” she explains. “I don’t think while I’m painting. It’s on an emotional level.”

Liberation for Black Trans Women / CANS Can’t Stant / The New Yorker

While there is greater support for trans people today, in the end its usually trans people and their closest allies who still do all the work of creating a safe, just world. In this film by Matt Nadel and Megan Plotkawe, we gain a greater understanding of the insidious nature of transphobia as we see a group of Black trans women fighting to repeal a law used to target queer locals.

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