Infamy

This feature-length documentary was shown at RESFEST, digital movie festival in Rotterdam, October 2005. This comment is a bit late but here it is anyway.

The film is about contemporary graffiti-culture and focuses on the lives of graffiti writers throughout the U.S like CLAW, SABER, ENEM, TOOMER, EARSNOT and JASE, from N.Y.C, Los Angeles and San Fransisco (which seems to have the most interesting scene nowadays).

On a human level the portrait of CLAW, a thirty-something Jewish girl from New York, is the best. She really got the spirit, bombing the whole city, quite touching how she lives for graffiti. Fun too are the mega-rooftops on some large office-buildings by SABER. Awesome, totally nuts and dangerous stuff! And then there's Joe, Joe "the graffiti guerrilla" Conolly, the graffiti buff, who sees it as his life task to remove graffiti in L.A. (I think it was in L.A.) and contributes to some laugh-out-loud moments.

It's interesting to see what's happening nowadays in the U.S., but it's all about "traditional" graffiti, which is making pieces, throw-ups and bombing with the good old spray-can. Nothing is shown about post-graffiti stuff like stencil-art or anything like that. Recently, the focus has shifted somewhat to other continents but there must be some new developments in street art in America too. Perhaps it's OK for people who don't know anything about graffiti culture but it has been around for 30 years now, so I think it's safe to assume people know about the phenomenon by now. This film sometimes plays more like a portrait of a waning culture with all of the artists coming of age (most are over thirty). Again, graffiti has moved on and we don't see anything about other recent developments. Do we really need to see throw-ups on freight trains anno 2005? What's that all about? In general, compelling material but for a general audience, watch STYLE WARS first.

I love this film so much, I show everyone I meet who knows anything about the culture, but you can learn a lot if you've never seen a graff film before or ever wondered what the people running the show were really like. This is not to say that this is the end all be all of graff movies, but it's a really good representation of some of the most INFLUENTIAL individuals still in the game.

Huge props to Pray and Gastman and the cameramen on taking the risk for their own film, I'm sure one or more investigations resulted from the making... Hopefully nothing too severe. It is a big deal for a writer to show their face, people must recognize.

This movie helped me understand more of what I love about graff so much, the HONESTY of the art form above all else.

It goes into daily life with each person not holding much back, esp. the openly PROUD/ strong/black/and homosexual earsnot setting an example to speak your mind, (which more people should follow), the personality traits/flaws of writers (Their egos, their gregariousness, impulses, non apologetic behavior, etc), their artistic motivations (whether it be in evolving their graffiti further, to their fine art to fashion to tattooing to sketching), what its like to live in a rough hood and be stereotyped (LOS ANGELES, NY, etc), dealing with other people's expectations including your peers and your parents)...

For a movie shot in a lot of illegal locations, the cinematography/lighting/technicalities was amazing. It takes BIG BALLS, great amounts of trust I'm sure, and a passion for art to make something like this... can't wait for the next project!

I have seen a number of graffiti documentaries, and have liked many, but this is the best of the lot. This documentary, more than any other that I have seen, can place different types of graffiti in relation to one another, and which can locate graffiti within the larger art world, and within the community at large. That the film is able to do this while telling compelling human stories, and without relying on lectures and commentary, but using only the words of the subjects themselves, takes this film from good to great.

With the other graffiti documentaries I have seen , you sometimes get the feeling that a great deal of work went into gathering up a bundle of information and presenting it to you. That is all very well, but this film does not just compile information, or even cut a core sample out of the subject, but like art itself, manages to capture the essence of the subject itself.

A lot of documentaries are interesting to a person who likes, or is interested in a particular subject, but "preach to the choir" as it were, requiring that the viewer already accept the point that is nominally being made, well ahead of time. By contrast, 'Infamy is a film that you can show to someone who doesn't understand or accept graffiti.

Last, but not least, this documentary does not simply rely on the virtues of the art that is the subject of the film. From production values, to the human dramas of the artists, this is a good film, and upholds the standards of its own medium. A top-notch documentary all the way around.