Bomb It

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BOMB IT is a wild ride into the heart of the global graffiti culture where the love of art and ego clashes explosively with law and order. On top of a fresh soundtrack of punk, hip-hop and funk, this high-octane film explores the many manifestations of "bombing." Through grainy night vision footage and raw interviews, the punks, ghetto Picassos, taggers, misfits, and political dissidents demonstrate in no uncertain terms why they risk arrest and injury to express themselves and reflect their society with spraypaint and marker. The rough-and-tumble cast of BOMB IT hails from New York and Tokyo, Berlin and Barcelona, Capetown, and Sao Paulo, with each city boasting its own unique style and form of grafitti. From the pioneers of bombing who painted living museums on trains as they rolled between the Bronx and Brooklyn in New York to the underground artist who seeks the sublime painting in blue deep in the bowels of Sao Paulo's sewers, the artists in BOMB IT are fascinating studies in the power of art to disturb, protest, and enlighten. Review ------ The movie also considers that bombing (the term of choice for graffiti painters), once deemed a subversive act, has inevitably been co-opted over the last decade or so, its influences turning up in video games and marketing campaigns, and the work itself ed on gallery walls. But if the artists shown here making magic with spray paint are any indication, graffiti will never go out of style. It will continue to move with the times; with luck, the filmmakers there to document it will do it the justice that this one does. --New York Times Genuinely global, multicultural, and multilingual in its urban perspectives, this lively documentary features graffiti artists talking about their work and illustrates their discourse with images in Philadelphia, New York, Los Angeles, Berlin, Hamburg, Amsterdam, Paris, Barcelona, Cape Town, Sao Paolo, Tijuana, and Tokyo. Filmmaker Jon Reiss also occasionally gives voice to people trying to eradicate graffiti. The relentless quick cutting and pop soundtrack are counterbalanced by the artists' personalities and sociopolitical credos. Unlike Michael Glawogger's more visionary Megacities (1998), this offers neither city symphonies nor overarching theses, but as the title suggests, the theme of rebellion predominates --Chicago Reader The Bronx subway "bombers" of the '70s had no idea they'd inspire an international movement, but overseas taggers took the spray paint and ran with it. In this graffiti doc, due in theaters and on DVD in May, Blek Le Rat stencils rodents along Parisian curbs; São Paulo artist Zezao "-caps" surreal mindscapes onto sewage tunnels; and Tokyo mom Belx2 splatters walls with little girl pictograms. --Wired P.when('A').execute(function(A) { A.on('a:expander:toggle_description:toggle:collapse', function(data) { window.scroll(0, data.expander.$expander[0].offsetTop-100); }); }); About the Director ------------------ Named one of 10 Digital Directors to Watch by Daily Variety, Reiss has covered the West Coast punk explosion, documented the notorious San Francisco performance group Survival Research Laboratories, rave culture in his debut feature-length documentary, Better Living Through Circuitry, and now graffiti culture. He also has a non-doc under his belt: the award-winning dark psychological drama, Cleopatra's Second Husband. Also famous for his music videos, in 1995 the Toronto Film Festival curated a retrospective of Reiss' music videos, which included 1992 s accled Nine Inch Nails video, Happiness in Slavery. Jon Reiss work has screened at festivals, theaters and cultural centers throughout the world as well as on channels such as IFC, Showtime, and the Sundance Channel. Reiss received his MFA from the UCLA Film School. See more ( javascript:void(0) )