“Style Wars,”
the legendary movie detailing New York’s graffiti culture and the birth of Hip-Hop,
will be re-released on August 23rd as a DVD 2-disc set distributed through Music
Video Distribution (MVD).
The DVD includes
over 3 hours of special features with artist galleries and interviews, outtake
footage, a remastered soundtrack, commentary from director Tony Silver and producer
Henry Chalfont and over 200 full trains and burners.
“Style Wars
documents one of the great American popular culture movements known as Hip Hop,”
Henry Chalfont told AllHipHop.com. “At its original release in 1984, the
irrepressible vitality of the kids in the film inspired young people around
the world.”
Chalfont said that
movie was filmed before Hip-Hop culture turned into a multi-billion dollar a
year industry.
“Style Wars
was filmed in neighborhoods where the broadest spectrum of
New Yorkers live, many of them suffering from the effects of years of flawed
government policies and catastrophic economic changes,” Chalfont said.
“But the film tells the story about the grass roots response to this neglect.
“One of the
essential elements of hip hop culture was always that it was about artists taking
control of their creative lives. Hip-Hop was a huge revolution carried out against
a
background of neglect in a bankrupt city with neighborhoods burning down to
rubble, schools slashing art and music from the curriculum, after school programs
closing their doors.”
Disc 1: The Film
and the Filmmaker, features the movie, 23 minutes of outtakes, interviews with
filmmakers Tony Silver and Henry Chalfont, interviews with Style Wars editors
Victor Kanefsky and Sam Pollard and classic tracks from the likes of The Treacherous
Three, Trouble Funk, Grandmaster Flash and many more.
Disc 2: Hall of
Fame, includes 32 artist galleries, new interviews with famed graffiti artists
such as Blade, Cap, Cey, Crash, Dez, Dondi, Seen TC5, Revolt and Zephyr, etc.,
plus guest interviews with Fab Five Freddy, Goldie, Guru, Kool DJ Red Alert
and a tribute to Dondi and Shy147. Disc 2 also shows a 30 minute continuous
loop of over 200 cars and burners with music from Def Jux artists El-P, RJD2
an Aesop Rock.
The movie is selling
retail $27.95 and includes a deluxe fold-out booklet with liner notes by renowned
Hip-Hop writer/editor Sacha Jenkins.
