Amos Angeles & Veli Silver
Style Wars 2 is a graffiti documentary produced by Veli and
Amos, a Swiss-Slovenian artist duo. The movie is a sequel of the cult movie
‚Style Wars’ from 1983 and gives an update on today’s graffiti and street art
scene. Veli and Amos hit the road to discover new graffiti styles and meet the
artists behind. A wild journey takes them from Europe to New York and the
Middle East, from galleries to war zones.
The movie
is a well-quoted honour to the original Style Wars movie and at the same time
tells the personal story of Veli and Amos. Even though the movie’s main focus
is on graffiti, it approaches the topic in a much broader way, and also alludes
to politics, art and lifestyle.
The documentary started with a story of how Veli Silver met Amos
Angeles. Silver had visited the train station and noticed a man lying on the
train tracks, and when he approached him, he discovered Amos. Amos was a free
spirited person who saw life in a rather unusual way. He was a man that always
wanted to have fun and often did as he pleases. Silver was able to convince
Amos of leaving the train tracks and since that day, they became best friends.
On the night of their first meeting, they had watched a movie called “Style
Wars” and ended up deciding that they would become Graffiti artist.
At first Amos and Veli began to imitate what they had seen in
the movie Style Wars and hence, started to paint trains. Initial they were
amateurs but later became better. Addicted to Graffiti, they even prepared
special trains for marriage ceremonies.
However, the authorities were against Graffiti street art which
led to most of the duo’s friends getting arrested. Bored and frustrated, the
duo decided to move to New York so as to experience quality Graffiti Art as they
had seen in the movie Style Wars. In New York, the pair had seen a train with
Style Wars graffiti art painted on it in a TV commercial and instantly fell in
love with it. They became obsessed with the piece to the point where, they
actually went on a quest to find the creator of the Style Wars piece.
In the search for the creator of Style Wars, they came across
some pretty remarkable Graffiti Artistes. One of the artistes was none other
than “Blade”, a very popular Graffiti artiste in New York. Blade had an
interesting perspective as to why he considers Graffiti painting as a form of
art. “We did this in the 70’s because it wasn’t about colour, but just a bunch
of creative people having fun”-(Blade), he said. The duo was also privileged to
meet with one of their icons in the name of “David Miranda”, one of the
directors in the original “Style Wars” movie. David Miranda also had an
interesting statement. “New York is not up to date when it comes to street Art”,
he says. A statement he made whilst explaining how far behind New York was In
Graffiti street art compared to the rest of the world. They met other famous Graffiti artiste but,
could not find who painted the Star Wars piece. Broke and frustrated they
returned to Europe. They travelled across Europe and the Middle East but with
no luck in finding the Star Wars graffiti artiste.
The Movie gives an insight of the mind of a Graffiti Art fanatic
and the extent to what they regard as Art and fun as well.
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