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| Images courtesy of Arrow Video |
The work of filmmaker, author and artist Charlie Ahearn is
synonymous with New York City, starting out with 16mm short art films which led
him to the Alfred E. Smith Projects on the Lower East Side to film a group of
local young martial artists in training. Armed with a Super 8mm camera in what became
the 1979 docudrama The Deadly Art of Survival which chronicled a martial
arts instructor fending off drug dealers from a rival karate school, it was here
that Ahearn first discovered the music and culture of hip hop. After finishing the martial arts picture,
Ahearn began working in the summer of 1980 alongside Fred Braithwaite otherwise
known as graffiti artist and hip -hop pioneer Fab 5 Freddy and Puerto Rican
graffiti artist and actor Lee Quiñones in what ultimately became the world’s
first feature-length hip-hop film with the 1982 docudrama Wild Style. Concerning the underground scene of breakdancing,
DJing with two turntables and emceeing spoken word rap, it forever canonized and
popularized the hip-hop movement into the mainstream.
Told through a docudrama style often fluctuating between
fact and fiction, Wild Style zeroes in on graffiti artist Lee Quiñones
playing himself as he scales fences and train tracks at night to actively
engage in painting trains and boxcars in between walls and alleyways. Scraping by day to day, he crosses paths with
Fab 5 Freddy, Lady Pink and soon finds himself being ushered towards striking
commission deals for wealthy elites by journalist Virginia (Patti Astor). Initially hesitant considering the guerrilla styled
nature of illegal graffiti art, Lee eventually accepts the job and paints a
mural in a band shell where the film’s climactic penultimate hip hop concert
takes place. Less of a conventional
narrative story with an end goal and more of a promenade through the
impoverished world of graffiti and hip hop coming together to create a kind of interactive
theater never experienced before, most of the film plays like a concert
documentary capturing breakdancing, emceeing and DJing with turntables in dance
halls. Loaded with numerous shots from inside
the train or traveling via car through the impoverished Lower East Side, the
film becomes as much of a musicology as it does a tapestry portrait of
then-modern urban New York life spoken of the same breath as Liquid Sky or
more immediately Mondo New York.
Shot on 16mm 1.37:1 Academy Ratio by Clive Davidson and John
Foster with an original score by Fab 5 Freddy and Blondie guitarist Chris Stein
amid a cacophony of musical acts including Grandmaster Flash, Busy Bee, The
Fantastic Five, The Cold Crush Brothers and The Rock Steady Crew, the $500,000
docudrama Wild Style went on to become a sizable hit at the box office
against a limited theatrical release, making around $15,122. Among the first photographic portraits of the
art of the spray can, the movement, look and sound of hip hop culture, the film
remains timelessly influential on the hip hop empire. A film with frequently sampled sound bytes
savored by disc jockeys looking for hot breakbeats, the film unfolds briskly as
a stark unflattering but nevertheless hopeful vision of camaraderie through art
and music in New York. Given the
characters onscreen largely play themselves, we don’t necessarily get award-winning
acting but we do get authentic performances with an element of truth running
through them. Though staged and often
fictional, the movement and pulse in the underground clubs and open amphitheater
comes through off the screen almost three dimensionally.
Arrow Video have gone above and beyond the call of duty in
this long awaited high-definition release of this cult favorite. Restored and presented on 4K UHD in a limited-edition
box including a disc full of boundless extras such as news reports and short
films, the set also comes with a CD soundtrack full of a variety of original
music, radio spots and outtakes. The
booklet included is at least 120 pages and comes housed with archival as well
as newly written essays and interviews as well as promotional materials. There’s also a double-sided foldout poster,
reversible sleeve art, Wild Style stickers and a mini-version of the Wild
Style issue of the Hip-Hop Family Tree comic book. For those unfamiliar with hip-hop or the film
Wild Style as well as longtime dedicated fans are going to mutually have
something of a wonderful blast with this thoroughly comprehensive boxed
set. Arrow Video really knocked this
release out of the park with enough extras it’ll take you days to wade through
it all. The ultimate special edition of
this prescient and rightly celebrated cult favorite!
--Andrew Kotwicki
