Paradox Street Art Film Festival at The Historic Village

The Tauranga Street Art Festival continues to follow its Paradox theme by merging street art events with unexpected locations in Tauranga. From 8 to 13 May the Paradox Film Festival will see the Village Cinema at The Historic Village join the street art movement. Seven of the best street art films will be screened across the week with a double bill on the final night.

All films have been selected to provide a unique view into the lives of some of the world’s most renowned street artists. They delve into the history of graffiti and street culture around the world and showcase a combination of street styles including hip hop, skateboarding, dance and painting. The films take the viewer from one side of the globe to the other using art forms that join together the most unlikely of collaborators.

The festival opens with Beautiful Losers and closes with a double bill featuring This is Berlin not New York and the Banksy film, Exit Through the Gift Shop. The final night at The Historic Village will feature live music, food and a bar. Even without watching the films people can enjoy an autumn night out at the Historic Village. Drinks and nibbles will be available to purchase every night before each film.

The Paradox Street Film Festival will be showing the following films:

Monday, 8 May: Beautiful Losers
This documentary follows the lives and careers of a collective group of Do-it-yourself artists and designers who inadvertently affected the art world. Influenced by the popular underground youth subcultures of the day, such as skateboarding, graffiti, street fashion and independent music, artists like Shepard Fairey, Mark Gonzales, Spike Jonze, Margaret Kilgallen, Mike Mills, Barry McGee, Phil Frost, Chris Johanson, Harmony Korine, and Ed Templeton began to create art that reflected the lifestyles they led.
 
Tuesday, 9 May: Bomb It
Through interviews and guerilla footage of graffiti writers in action on five continents, the documentary tells the story of graffiti from its origins in prehistoric cave paintings through its notorious explosion in New York City during the 70’s and 80’s, and then follows the flames as they paint the globe. This cutting edge documentary tracks down today’s most innovative and pervasive street artists as they battle for control over the urban visual landscape. You’ll never look at public spaces the same way again.

Wednesday, 10 May: Style Wars
Style Wars was awarded the Grand Prize for Documentaries at the 1983 Sundance Film Festival and is regarded as an indispensable document of New York Street culture of the early ’80s, the filmic record of a golden age of youthful creativity that exploded into the world from a city in crisis. Style Wars has become an emblem of the original, embracing spirit of hip hop as it reached out across the world from underground tunnels, uptown streets, clubs and playgrounds.

Thursday, 11 May: Wild Style
Wild Style is regarded as the first hip-hop motion picture. The main protagonist Zoro is the city’s most elusive graffiti writer. The film is a hybrid of a narrative musical and documentary, having the real and prominent hip-hop pioneers play themselves in a loosely scripted story shot entirely on location in The South Bronx and MTA Subway yards. Wild Style demonstrates the interconnections between music, dance, and graffiti art in the development of hip hop culture during its cultural turning point in the 1980’s.

Friday, 12 May: Gold Along the Banks
Gold Along the Banks is an independent documentary about a new generation of urban artists from the streets of Belgrade, Serbia. The film captures the lives, ambitions and visions of street artists, musicians, designers, photographers, students, entrepreneurs and other young Belgrade citizens. Every one of them successful without any funding or outside help. Through interviews, interesting comments and great photography, Gold Along the Banks gives a raw and unpolished look at the vibrant and diverse contemporary creative scene of Belgrade.

Saturday, 13 May: This is Berlin Not New York
This is Berlin not New York is a documentary film which examines western contemporary art and the tensions between commercialism and creativity, while documenting a journey of a group of young and talented New York based underground artists who travelled to Berlin in 2007 to meet and spend ten days with their German counterparts. In addition to staging an exhibition, street displays, and giving an artful makeover to an abandoned building, while collaborating on original projects that push conventional boundaries, together they explore artistic ideas and concepts.

Saturday, 13 May: Exit through the Gift Shop: A Banksy Film 
Exit Through the Gift Shop: A Banksy film is a documentary that tells the incredible, and allegedly true story (although, one can never be sure when it comes to Banksy) of Thierry Guetta, an eccentric French immigrant, film-maker and shop keeper from Los Angeles, and his obsession with street art, as he tries to locate and befriend Banksy. Eventually, as Banksy turns his camera on Mr. Guetta, he morphs into a street artist himself, inventing an alter ego called Mr. Brainwash, and becomes an overnight sensation. The film contains exclusive footage of many of the world’s infamous graffiti artists at work and in interviews.

Monday to Friday: Doors open at 6.30pm, films start at 7.30pm, $12 per movie plus standard booking fee

Saturday: Doors open at 6.30pm, films start at 7pm and 8.30pm, $12 per movie or $20 for the double bill plus standard booking fee

For more details and tickets, go to www.taurangastreetartfestival.nz/filmfestival