By STEVE DOLLAR
Much more than a cinematic time capsule of New York City in the outlaw days of the early 1980s, the 1983 documentary "Style Wars" was a work of art that reflected the vivid nature of its subject: the streetwise graffiti artists who, for a few years, turned the city's subway cars into mobile canvases of spray-painted invention.
Henry Chalfant, the producer of the ground-breaking 1983 documentary 'Style Wars,' is shown in 1982 next to a wall bearing his own work.
Some officials, like then-Mayor Ed Koch, called it vandalism—and to be sure, not all of the city's rogue spray-painters rose to the mantel of fine art. But the art world quickly embraced these "writers," as the artists called themselves, making international gallery stars out of names like Dondi, Crash, Daze, Lady Pink and Mare 139. The work may have been painted over, but the movement's legacy thrived onscreen, as "Style Wars" became an essential part of New York's visual history.
It's ironic, then, that the film is in danger of fading away. The original 16 mm negatives, housed in the archives of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in Los Angeles, are damaged.
"It's time to bring it back to its best possible light," said Henry Chalfant, who co-produced the film with its late director, Tony Silver. As Mr. Chalfant explained recently, chemicals leeching out from the splicing tape have blurred and distorted the film's frames. "You can fix it digitally, apparently. We're hoping some production house might step forward and do it on an in-kind basis and give us help."
Meanwhile, Mr. Chalfant, now 70, has launched a fund-raising campaign to acquire the $200,000 budget that has been estimated to complete the restoration. He'll jumpstart it Thursday as BAMcinématek hosts two special screenings of the film, with a Q&A session and a reception featuring a reunion of several of the artists featured in "Style Wars"—many of whom were only teenagers when the documentary was shot. Commemorative T-shirts and prints will be sold, and the artist Noc 167 will re-create his original "Style Wars" piece that inspired the film's title, using a 20-foot canvas stretched in front of the Brooklyn Academy of Music's entrance on Lafayette Avenue in downtown Brooklyn.
The graffiti artist Dust, photographed in the Bronx in 1981
"New York was a city on the brink of collapse," said Mare 139, also known as Carlos Rodriguez, who subsequently adapted his graffiti skills to sculpture. "At that moment, this little seed came up. I don't want to quote Claes Oldenberg, but he compared it to a big bouquet from Latin America. We created these colorful narratives of what was happening in the city."
Mr. Koch, an irascible figure in his few brief appearances in the film, still takes issue with that assessment. In a phone interview Tuesday, the former mayor, who now heads the nonprofit government reform organization New York Uprising, said: "Graffiti is graffiti, and it's disgusting and destroys the neighborhood," said. I know that there are some great artists that came out of it, no doubt about it. But at what expense? The expense of destroying—fortunately not permanently—the city of New York."
Mr. Chalfant, who is married to the actress Kathleen Chalfant, wasn't a filmmaker. He was a sculptor and photographer who, by the mid-1970s, had become devoted to taking stills of subway cars adorned in graffiti. He had documented some 850 cars by the time he met Mr. Silver, who thought the rapidly emerging New York hip-hop scene— with its taggers, breakdancers, DJs and MCs—would make for a great movie.
"I was taking the pictures for fun," Mr. Chalfant said. "It never occurred to me to make a film. It was a good collaboration."
Though immersed in the marginalized circle of artists it documents, "Style Wars" captures the beginnings of a subculture that would eventually balloon into a global phenomenon. Looking back, much of what the film depicts seems innocent and full of idealism.
"The atmosphere this culture sprung up in was pretty bleak," Mr. Chalfant said. "At the time, I don't think any of us had any clue about the impact it was going to have on the world. Hip-hop was just coming to people's attention."
As hip-hop has become increasingly commercialized, Mr. Chalfant said his film still resonates with a spirit of social progress. "It all sprang up in the era at the end of the 1960s, so there was an awareness of social injustice," he said. "The kids were inventing something that was stopping the wave of violence that preceded them. Now, of course, kids growing up in the same neighborhoods are targets of marketing strategies to buy the stuff their older brothers and parents invented so it's kind of strange."
Mr. Rodriguez, whose own new exhibit opens Oct. 5 at the Raw Space Gallery in Chelsea, offered an abiding perspective. "It was a catalyst to ask, 'Who are you? And who could you be?'"
