Documentary Films: Exploring Graffiti, Street Art & Urban Art

Good news: The next parts of the new graffiti and street art documentary “Bomb It 2” by Jon Reiss is online now! After Bangkok and Tel Aviv (Remember the post I wrote last week!), the four new episodes present urban artist from Copenhagen, including Great, Bates, Victor Ash and HuskMitNavn. They show Great and Bates painting a wall while talking about their passion for their work, HuskMitNavn talking about why he only bombs characters, and what he doesn’t want his neighbors to know and Ash talking about how he migrated from doing illegal to legal graffiti… ...

I well remember that amazing stop motion film “True Colors” by Tomislav Topic about the power of pure color and creative ideas. In about five minutes, which were recorded in almost four month, he and his crew brought color to life and created in that way an urban art showpiece project. Recently the making-of was published which documented the development process and which proves that there’s indeed no digital fake - everything is handmade! ...

Documentary | I already informed you about the upcoming new graffiti and street art documentary “Bomb It 2” and showed a first trailer. Now, the after first videos showing urban artist from Bangkok additional parts of the film are online, presenting deeper insights into the film’s concept by featuring the street artists Klone, Inspire and Know Hope in Israel! The sequel to BOMB IT, Jon Reiss’ explosive graffiti documentary which told the story of the street art movement from humble beginnings to global phenomenon. This time round, Bomb It 2 ventures into uncharted territory, reporting on the street art scene in Asia, Australia and beyond. (babelgum.com) ...

…is the name of the third book of the “Untitled” book series. After “Street art in the Counter Culture” (2008) and “The Beautiful Renaissance” (2009) this 192 pages book again is about the most important art movement of our time and features artists from around the globe including Banksy, Dan Witz, Ron English, Obey, Mark Jenkins, Elbowtoe, Swoon and many more. But it also covers this year’s “Fame Festival” (Do you remember that brilliant animation Blu and David Ellis did last year?) and the “Ghost Village” project and discusses the hot question: “Is Street Art an extension and evolution of Graff or a corruption of Graff’s pure rebel yell into an easy to swallow rebel lifestyle?” ...

Today you can win one of five books about one of the most famous street artists worldwide on Urbanartcore.eu - “Banksy - Wall & Piece”. Update: The lottery ended, so any further comments won’t be accepted! The winners will be informed… Street Art Lottery | From now on Banksy’s so called street art documentary “Exit Through The Gift Shop” is also shown in German cinemas! For that reason I will give away five issues of Banksy’s “Wall & Piece” book! ...

Iranian Street Art | I already wrote about Iranian street art pioneer A1one and his interesting mixture of stencil art and proper calligraphy, but today I found a great documentary by the Webistan Photo Agency in which he talks about his backgrounds, street art in Tehran, his own art and why in Iran they know that the wall graffiti and street art are important not only in Iran. In Iran, both Hip Hop and graffiti have the same age. This culture is not established yet. It’s like an child - it’s just growing but right now it’s more fight and just doing websites… (A1one) ...

Graffiti Legend | Everyone who has something to do with graffiti or urban arts in general should have heard about Mr. Jon Naar. Naar is, in addition to Martha Cooper and Henry Chalfant, one of the first photojournalists who documented graffiti and its environment in New York City! His legendary book “The Faith Of Graffiti” was published about 35 years ago and has been re-released in an expanded edition earlier this year. For that reason there were again a lot of specials about him and his book, his photographies and his opinion about the entire graffiti world… ...

Graffiti Documentary | As already mentioned, I photographically documented the creation of that new “Calculate” mural by famous British graffiti artist Ben Eine in London - But I was not alone! The graffiti wall is part of the Moniker Art Fair which will open its doors today and therefore a lot of other people and documentarists joined the creative process. Also a camera team by Babelgum was there and filmed the entire creation progress! Their video is online now and shows in almost three minutes how Ben Eine and his crew painted the mural in about two days. ...

Art Magazine | On September 14th, 2006 the first issue of an urban art magazine was printed which should later become one of my favourite underground art mags. Since then the quality, circulation and publicity of that quarterly street art and graffiti documenting magazine grew steadily and today “Very Nearly Almost” (VNA) is probably the most well-known magazine for urban art forms and their protagonists in Great Britain. What I really like about VNA is not only the interesting content or the nice pics. Much more it’s that ongoing advancement and of course the nice launch parties which unfortunately are confined to London. But I heard that this will maybe change in the near future… ...

After the successful graffiti documentary Bomb It, which through interviews and guerrilla footage of graffiti writers in action told the story of the graffiti movement the successor Bomb It 2 will coming soon and feature the street art movement around the globe. Although I’m a bit confused after watching the trailer [*], I’m looking forward to watch the entire graffiti/ street art documentary, because it promises interesting impressions of urban artists in action, statements and great artworks! I’m most excited about the reports from Singapore, Hong Kong and Bangkok, because I haven’t seen that much from there… Does anybody know when it will be published? ...