“Bomb It” Trailer
A Documentary about Graffiti Culture

“Bomb It” Synopsis

Bomb It – The Movie The Global Graffiti Documentary is the explosive new documentary from award-winning director Jon Reiss investigating the most subversive and controversial art form currently shaping international youth culture: graffiti.

“Bomb It” Review

Bomb It is the explosive new documentary from award winning director Jon Reiss of Better Living Through Circuitry fame. Bomb It travels the globe showcasing the different graffiti scenes. The cities the DVD was filmed in, include: Los Angeles, New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco, London, Paris, Amsterdam, Barcelona, Hamburg, Berlin, Cape Town, Sao Paulo, and Tokyo.

While visiting these cities, the documentary features interviews with artists from each of the cities. Some of the artists featured in the documentary include: Cornbread, Taki 183, T-kid 170, Revs, Shepard Fairey, KRS One, Chino, Revok, Pose 2FX, Tracy 168, Stay High 149, Cope 2, Inkie, Lady Pink, Zephyr, Skuf, Blek le Rat, Daim, Pike & Nug, Falko, Faith47, Scage, Mickey, Zezao, Chaz Bojorquez, Belx2, Tribe, Tats Cru, Ron English.

Few people are neutral on the subject of graffiti. One the one hand you have the practitioners who see themselves as everything from the true artists of the urban landscape to revolutionaries reclaiming public space on behalf of the people. On the other, you have property owners and government officials who see graffiti as vandalism and those who create it as at best public nuisances and at worse as criminals.

One reason graffiti is such a volatile issue is because it touches on many fundamental questions of urban life. What constitutes public space? Who gets to decide how it will be used? Is advertising in public spaces a form of pollution? Can graffiti achieve the status of art, and as such should it be protected from defacement by other graffiti artists? What constitutes a work of art anyway, and who gets to decide? Does spraying your name on a wall constitute a significant political act, or would such energies be better directed elsewhere?

Jon Reiss’s 2008 documentary Bomb It raises these questions and more, presenting a wide sampling of graffiti art from around the world, and a variety of viewpoints relating to graffiti. He includes interviews with everyone from first-generation graffiti artists to academic theorists: segments shot in South Africa, Brazil, Europe and Japan are particularly useful in broadening the discussion. The main weakness of this documentary is the lack of integration or analysis: most often viewpoints are simply juxtaposed with the result that the documentary acts primarily as a collage of statements and images to be taken at face value, with no attempt on the part of the filmmaker to verify them or inquire further.

Bomb It is clearly in the pro-graffiti camp, as signaled by its tag line: “Street Art is Revolution.” Reiss does give some screen time to anti-graffiti voices, but the preponderance of the film presents graffiti as fun, daring, revolutionary, and beautiful, while the anti-graffiti camp not only gets less time to state their case, but are filmed in a manner which often makes them come off as scolds and killjoys. Ironically, the words of the graffiti artists are often contradicted by the ugly scrawls evident on the walls behind them: if anyone is free to write and paint on public walls, there’s no reason to expect that the artistically untalented will decline to participate.

“Bomb It” isn’t the first documentary to address the history and evolution of graffiti culture, and it probably won’t be the last. But what distinguishes Jon Reiss’s lively, sure-handed film from the rest is that it widens the spectrum by taking a comprehensively international viewpoint.

“Bomb It” isn’t the first documentary to address the history and evolution of graffiti culture, and it probably won’t be the last. But what distinguishes Jon Reiss’s lively, sure-handed film from the rest is that it widens the spectrum by taking a comprehensively international viewpoint.

Traveling from graffiti art’s roots in Philadelphia and New York to Paris, Tokyo, Cape Town and other cities around the globe, the film features interviews with artists (some veiling their identities) whose milieu gives impetus to their activities, which include social rebellion, political agitation, expressions of boredom and simply bringing art to the streets. Though Mr. Reiss’s approach is decidedly pro-graffiti, he also gives screen time to the occasional naysayers: law-enforcement types who consider tagging a public nuisance.

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 mounted 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.

Other Films about Graffiti

Share on Facebook

Technorati Tags: bomb it, culture, graff art, graffiti, Hip Hop, tagger, the movie