Season 3 2019

Cult films like Charlie Ahearn’s ‘Wild Style (1982), Henry Chalfant’s ‘Style Wars’ (1984) and ‘Beat Street (1984) by Harry Belafonte switched on a generation of young Germans to breakdance and hip-hop culture. Interviews with the first graffiti generation from Dortmund, Berlin and Frankfurt.

The BBC crew around Jay One, Skki and Ash is one of the most influential pioneers in French graffiti. They were some of the first artists in Europe to develop their own style and break free from New York influence.

The graffiti movement from New York spread throughout Scandinavia after the release of Henry Chalfant's film Style Wars (1984). Throughout the whole of Sweden, hundreds of kids begin to write on the walls. Among them, ZIGGY and DISEY, who developed their own elaborate styles.

Darco and Gawki got to know FBI-Crew in 1985 in Paris. They become an integral part of the Paris graffiti movement with a style typical of that city. Paris was the center of the European scene, but graffiti artists in Munich, Hamburg, Amsterdam and Copenhagen were also developing their own takes on the trend.

Graffiti writer Bomber from Frankfurt and Shark from Dortmund are cornerstones of the German scene. Dortmund became a graffiti icon in the Ruhr area in the mid-1980s and was the catalyst for important developments in other large cities... much to the displeasure of residents.

Graffiti came to Berlin in the early 1980s. The first pieces were created directly on the Berlin Wall. But it was only with the fall of the wall did the whole city become a huge playground for graffiti artists.