| By Jon Reiss (Tribeca 2007) "Carving one's name, One's love, A date, On the wall of a
building, Such vandalism cannot be explained solely by
destructive impulses. I see in it rather the survival instinct of
all those who cannot erect pyramids or cathedrals to perpetuate
their name." -Brassai, Graffiti, 1933 In the early interviews for Bomb It, I was immediately struck by the myriad of issues and contradictions brought about by this movement of outsider art. It was apparent that graffiti and street art are part of a continuum of humankind's compulsion, which has been going on for thousands of years, to make their mark on walls. The very act itself addresses the eternal human quest for some form of immortality in the face of a vast universe - some universal desire to state, "I was here" - which, I feel, drives a good deal of human creation, not just graffiti. But in contemporary society, this desire has been criminalized - in many cases, severely. As I write this, three of the writers who appear in our film have been indicted by the New York criminal justice system: Ket, 2EASE and Dro (the latter two from the ACC crew). Each of them is facing twenty to seventy years in prison. That is not a misprint. They are, in fact, facing decades in prison. For writing on a wall. Which can be cleaned. While many writers have various codes of conduct as to where they will write and not write, and even I (with many writers) am not in favor of writing on people's personal property (for obvious reasons), something is clearly askew when artists are going to prison for expressing themselves in public, when many other criminals, who have committed far more severe crimes, serve much less time. A slight digression: Many graffiti "artists" don't call themselves artists; they consider themselves writers because what they do is write on the walls. All writers you talk to about their work will talk at length about the letters their graff name comprises: why they chose that name (it usually began with the love of one specific letter), why they write the letter in that specific shape, and how they transform that shape over time. I have, myself, always been a lover of typography, and feel that this love and exploration of type is its own art form. What I found ironic very early on in the production is, in a society such as ours that still struggles with getting young people excited about learning, this form of expression has been made illegal. "We're just writing our names on the walls, there's a lot of
worse crimes we could be doing." -NETA, ACC Crew, Bomb It, 2007 As we traveled the world, we quickly discovered there is a worldwide battle over public space. The "quality of life laws" and the broken windows theory that support those laws had spread from New York City to Europe and to every other corner of the earth, with severe punishments. The exploration of this battle and its consequences became the driving force of the film. The controversy brings up some very essential questions: What is the nature of art? Who determines what is art and what is not art? Who controls freedom of speech? Who controls public space? Why are some manifestations in public space that are offensive to many people (billboards and strip malls) sanctioned, and others (graffiti) criminalized? We, as a society, assume that billboards, since they are a commercial enterprise, must be legal. Also, most people assume there must be some large fee paid by advertisers to the city for the right to put up their ads - perhaps those billboards are an important source of income for cities so desperate for cash. Actually, however, many billboards - especially in Los Angeles - are, in fact, illegal. A form of sanctioned and accepted graff, if you will. And to add insult to injury, the fees paid by billboard companies for the right to have their commercials sprawled across the urban landscape is often as low as twenty dollars a year. The ultimate irony is that a kid could face years in prison for defacing a billboard that is, in fact, illegal in itself. "A high wall throws down a challenge. Protecting property,
defending order, it is a target for protest and insult, as well
as for demands of every sexual, political or social passion."
-Brassai, Graffiti, 1933 Because graffiti has become so criminalized, one of the biggest challenges in making this film was to convince the writers to not only allow us to film them talking about their crimes on camera, but also to let us film them in the act while committing those crimes - most of which are now classified as felonies. In Berlin, after breaking into an apartment building, we spent hours on the roof with the CBK crew waiting for the undercover police (who were, theoretically, on the street) to disperse. This was after the passage of the new anti-graffiti law making graffiti punishable by prison sentences of three years. The most "fun" was had in Sheffield, England. We had gone into an abandoned gas station that had been taken over as a squat. After half an hour, we heard the classic "come out with your hands up" over a police loudspeaker. Since our rental car had London plates and we had been observed going into the squat (the London bombings had occurred the week before), we were suspected of being terrorists. Fortunately, when they discovered we were merely white filmmakers, they let us go after searching our Interpol records. This actually brings the punishment for graffiti into perspective: Do you really care if someone is writing in an abandoned building, or are you more concerned about someone blowing up that building? After entering an abandoned subway tunnel right below the Manhattan Bridge with some writers in New York, we noted how easy it would have been for anyone to have loaded the place up with C4 and taken out this glorious architectural monument. It occurred to me that perhaps there might be a better use of police resources than chasing 14-year-old kids who write on buildings. "I was, after the fashion of humanity, in love with my name, and,
as young educated people commonly do, I wrote it everywhere."
-Goethe, Poetry and Truth, 1811 View trailers.http://bombit-themovie.com/trailer/default.html The Bomb It blog (http://bombit-themovie.com/blog) is amazingly informative re: graffiti culture in general, with constant updates & news items from around the world, especially regarding artist's rights. From there you can also check out their colorful Flicker site. http://www.flickr.com/groups/bombit/pool
NEW SCREENING DATE CONFIRMED:
5/23 - 5/28 Los Angeles, California, USA Laemmle Sunset 5 Festival Screenings:
- Sao Paulo International Film Festival, Brazil - Latin American premiere on 10/25, 10/27, 10/29
- Doclisboa, Lisbon, Portugal - the centerpiece of the closing night festivities on 10/26 & 10/28
- Olympia Film Festival, Washington, USA - 11/7
- Leeds International Film Festival, England - official UK premiere on 11/9, 11/10 & 11/18
- Oslo International Film Festival, Norway - 11/19, 11/20 &11/21
- British Film Institute, Southbank, London, England - 11/23
- Black Nights Film Festival POFF, Tallinn, Estonia - opening night on 11/24
- IDFA Amsterdam, Netherlands - Docs for Sale (festival runs: 11/22 - 12/2; screening times TBD)
- Black Soil International Hip Hop Festival, Amsterdam/Rotterdam, Netherlands (festival runs: 11/23 - 12/2; screening times TBD)
- Espontánea Film Festival, Saragossa, Spain (festival in June 2008; screening times TBD) |
