Arrested Motion shares this fantastic find – “Wow. We sat down to scan through the Megunica documentary real quick but ended up watching the whole thing. The film first made rounds in 2009 or so and has won multiple awards at various film festivals but we don’t think there has been an easy way for street art fans get ahold of it – until now. Wired Italy has now made the entire film, all 83 minutes of it, available streamed on their website.
For those unfamiliar, the footage follows Blu on a trip to South America through the countries of Mexico, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Costa Rica, and Argentina. The film follows the Italian street star as he paints and as the crew interact with other people and other artists – basically tracking their adventures. What is particularly enjoyable are all the little animations and the different techniques they use in the process inserted throughout the film. At the end the film, you can definitely see this is when Blu started perfecting his now famous graffiti-animation style. As a bonus, you should read Wired’s interview with the director – Lorenzo Fonda.”
The doc was filmed over a weekend (plus a Friday night before and some neatening up on the Monday). Ben was painting 2 walls – one being PRO PRO PRO on Ebor Street in East London – the other being CALCULATE on Hollywell Lane, also in East London.
PRO PRO PRO was on the side of ad agency Mother London. A week or so earlier Ben had painted ANTI ANTI ANTI on the opposite wall at the request of graphic design guru Neville Brody in conjunction with the Anti Design Festival. Mother loved the work and asked that he do something on their wall.
The CALCULATE wall is one that Ben has previously and famously painted with ‘VANDALISM’. This time he had been invited to paint the wall my Moniker Art Fair as he was exhibiting at their exhibition the following week.
Quite a chaotic weekend but both walls got finished and looked great!
Ben has a show coming up in San Francisco at White Walls Gallerywhere this film amongst other street art docs will be playing.
And me….I am a filmmaker based in East London (handy). I get involved in all sorts of projects, but this one was great fun.
There are a number of other snippets up on the film’s website. All are worth checking out. I chose the above primarily because it is a joy to watch Hardy put together the elements of that simple tattoo design.
I don’t know much about the vinyl toy universe. Thankfully, The Vinyl Frontier is on the way. The film documents and explores the phenomenon of vinyl toy collecting. Appearances by Ron English, Frank Kozik, and help to fill out the context – looking at both artistic process and collecting impulse. (via Living Proof).
A clip with Bill McMullen follows, his thoughts on influences covered.
This film chronicles the history behind iona rozeal brown’s solo exhibition, ‘iona rozeal brown: all falls down,’ at the Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland. For this show, iona created a number of new works, and worked with local high school students on several collaborative projects, including a wall painting and Japanese screen decorated with poetry written by Cleveland-area teenagers. The exhibition opened on 1/29/10, closed on 5/9/10, and was sponsored by the Joyce Foundation, Chicago, IL.
Consider this a follow up to the previous post on MOCA Cleveland’s new building. Ms. brown is one of my favorites.
My brothers at Highsnobiety remind of the The Genius of Design. The BBC 2 documentary series explores the history of design, and is now available for purchase on DVD.
The first episode, as apparent in the title of this post, is also available to watch via The Genius of Design on Vimeo. Worth the time, just a shade under an hour, as this is a fantastic series. Episode 2 has just been added over the weekend, so if you love this… get cracking on the second right off.
This documentary (Gerald Fox, UK 2008, 50 min) by award-winning director Gerald Fox, presents an intimate portrait of the artist’s life and work, a story largely told by the artist himself.
16.03.2010
A pioneer of installation art in the 1960s, Brazilian Cildo Meireles (b.1948) has influenced generations of international artists, yet, surprisingly, his work is little known in Britain. His dramatic and politically charged environments have included maze-like structures built upon shards of broken glass that the visitor must walk across, and rooms filled with ashes and the smell of gas.
A Tate Media production in association with Arts Council England
Arrested Motionpoints out the trailer for the upcoming Jean-Michael Basquiat documentary The Radiant Child. The film was directed by the artists friend, Tamara Davis, and premiered at this years Sundance Film Festival. Davis captured most of the footage in the late 1980s, then overcome by her friends death decided to shelve the project. Some 20 years later, The Radiant Child was completed.
Creative Review’s January Issue celebrates the popular Peruvian musical style Chicha. For the cover, the Urcuhuaranga Brothers – responsible for many of the posters promoting Chicha concerts – conceived of the look and produced them outside of Lima in their print shop, Publicidad Viusa. In celebration of the design, Creative Review filmed a short documentary about Chicha visual arts.
Check out the video after the jump. Additionally, the February Issue is out, and a preview has been posted here.
