the growing amount of media coverage and exposure, including a glimpse of the
Rocksteady crew flipping their particular brand of physical poetry in Flashdance.
One night, Hip-hop heads in general and graffiti writers in particular are glued to their TV sets,
watching Style Wars, a documentary film by New York sculptor Henry Chalfant
and Los Angeles filmaker Tony Silver.
The reason?
Although the film includes extensive footage of musical aspects of Hip-hop,
itīs primary focus was on the kids who ran the underground.
1. What year did you started the filming of Style Wars?
HENRY CHALFANT: 1981
2. What was the motivation to shoot the film?
TONY SILVER:I read in a piece in the Village Voice in like 1980,1981, about
a bunch of youths who were arrested for rioting on the mezzanine level
of the 155th street train station in Manhattan. The kids were break dancing and that they were having a throw down.
I had never heard about this and didnīt know anything about B-boys
or that stuff.
It sounded fantastic.I knew Henry, so I called him up and he said:
"Iīve been thinking of making a film, but Iīm not a filmaker,
maybe we can get together and figure this out".
3. Where did you start filming?
HENRY:We filmed a battle between RSC and Dynamo Rockers in the spring of 1981.
At the time, the film was going to feature the Rocksteady crew,
and have some graffiti involved.
We put up our own money to start the film, and then ran out of money.
It took us such a long time to raise the money to actually get back to filming
that[by then] Rocksteady had kinda moved on to big performances.
So, we started to emphasize more graffiti.
TONY:Henry was a devoted documenter of the art.
He had volumes and volumes of photographs. It immortaliazed everything,
and made it permanent.
We wanted to do the same thing in the film but wanted to give it the sense
of motion that it didnīt have in the fixed state that had existed in photography
4. Did you have any reservations about bringing a film crew onto
train tracks, lay ups and going into train yards?
HENRY: Before I got involved with the film, I had gone into
New Lots[a train yard in Brooklyn]with Duro, Min, Mare and other writers.
It was quite an experience for me.
Workers came wielding lead pipes, so we had to run out of there real fast.
After that , we went to the Sutpin Blvd.lay up[an undergriund area where the
trains are "laid up" for the night] on the E & F line, and did a couple of throw ups.
That was really my only experiance going into yards.
Later, while we were doing the film, we had to get access through the Transit Authority,
in order to have a balanced view of the battle between writers
and the city going on at that time.
They[the MTA] told us that they werenīt going to cooperate with us
if we were going to do illegal trains.
5. Is there any reason why it took so long to put Style Wars
on the market for either purchase or rental?
HENRY: The basic reason is that therīs alot of very expensive recordings
of early rap[in the film].
It took us a while to afford the rights for that.
6. Did you have any idea that Style Wars would have influenced
so many or have the impact that it did?
TONY:Very early, I thought it would be a good film.
I had no idea that it would have the impact that itīs smaller circle of Hip-hop-related people worldwide.
That it would live as long as it has to me is amazing...itīsvery humbling.
HENRY: I think it took us by surprise. I knew the subject was interesting,
and it was going to be a great film, but we had no idea that it was
going to have that kind of effect were people would know it by heart
It really become well known all arround the world.
INTERVIEW BY CHINO BYI
