All posts tagged: Union Docs

BSA Film Friday: 04.12.13

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

Now screening: “Spray Masters” and “Tunnel Stories” Sunday in Brooklyn, Simon Silaidis Calligraphy-Graffiti “Skyfall”, Cern is becoming a Balloonatic, and Jim Vision and The Blue Walls of Buenos Aires.

BSA Special Feature:
“Spray Masters” and “Tunnel Stories”

Above is a still from the “Spray Masters” trailer, which features New York can wielders from the subway train era, Futura 2000, Lee, Lady Pink and Zephyr. Union Docs will be screening the documentary SprayMasters and the short film Tunnel Stories. It is a great opportunity to hang with some storytelling film people and the filmmakers Geoff Duncanson and Manfred Kirchheimer will be in attendance along with the series curator Reid Bingham (Cinebeasts) will be in attendance.

“Spray Masters” will be screening this Sunday at Union Docs. Click here for more information:

 

Simon Silaidis Calligraphy-Graffiti “Skyfall”

A stunning featurette that focuses on the gestural full-bodied application of the calligraphic graffiti work by Simon Silaidis to a large rooftop. There are a number of people today who have brought this sense of formal refinement to the hand of the graff oeuvre and it remains to be seen who takes the mantel since it keeps expanding. For sure, when you choose your winner, there will be someone to ink the award certificate.

Shot and directed by Alex Loannou, shout out for editing to Sectiongraphix.

Still from the video, “Skyfall”. (© Simon Silaidis)

Still from the video, “Skyfall”. (© Simon Silaidis)

CERN is Becoming a Balloonatic

Graffiti artist Cern ran with the YMI crew in the nineties and has evolved into a fantasy surrealist in recent years with large murals, signature birds, and idealized figures. Couple of years ago (or less) he told us that he was playing around with balloons as an experiment to augment his installations on walls. Uh-oh, looks like he’s fallen into a big balloon vortex and the fascination with balloons has, well, ballooned. In this new video we see how far he can take it, or rather how far balloons have take over Cern.

Props to Jeremy Rocklin for the camera and editing work.

Cern. Still from the video (© Cern)

Cern. Still from the video (© Cern)

Cern. Still from the video (© Cern)

Jim Vision and The Blue Walls of Buenos Aires

We end this weeks selections with dubby meditations on Street Art by Jim Vision in Buenos Aires. Because sometimes a wall just needs a splash of blue. Or many splashes of blue. Also, barbecues, sunshine, families, babies, buses, horses, angels, and devils.

Read more

Union Docs Present: “The Subway Series” Screening of Tunnel Stories and Spraymasters (Brooklyn, NYC)

THIS SUNDAY – 7:30PM
322 Union Ave
G to Metropolitan / L to Lorimer

Please join us at Union Docs for the third screening in our two-month long Subway Series film festival! This screening will focus on the artists, taggers, and vandals, who make their mark underground in tunnels and on trains. It features the short film Tunnel Stories followed by the featured doc SprayMasters, along with a couple other short subway-related surprises.

Filmmakers Geoff Duncanson and Manfred Kircheimer will be in attendance for a Q&A along with series curator Reid Bingham.

TUNNEL STORIES | Geoff Duncanson | 2002 | USA | 24 minutes | Digital Projection

Beneath New York City, there is a book being written on the walls of tunnels and underground passageways. Raw, honest, and fascinating, Tunnel Stories provides a rare glimpse into the world of the graffiti artists who see subway tunnels as a playground, gallery, and lifestyle. Hear the stories of why these artists, writers, taggers, and vandals risk arrest, injury, or even death in pursuit of their clandestine lifestyle.

SPRAYMASTERS | Manfred Kirchheimer | 2008 | USA | 85 minutes | Digital Projection

In SprayMasters, four ex-graffiti artists reflect on their early years as renegades who snuck into rail yards and decorated New York City subway cars with stolen paint while eluding arrest. Now in their forties and embraced by the establishment, Lee Quinones, Lady Pink, and Futura 2000 are prominent artists with an international following, while Zephyr is a widely published journalist who writes about graffiti and popular culture.

They talk about the extreme risks they took as teenagers, the joys of seeing their work on subway cars, the diverse styles of graffiti, its global reach, and its place in modern life, where it has been co-opted by advertising and fashion. Directed by Manny Kirchheimer (Tall), SprayMasters is a follow-up to his underground classic Stations of the Elevated (1980), one of the first films to feature New York’s infamous subway graffiti.

http://www.uniondocs.org/2013-04-14-subway-series/

Read more