Film

If your alley has been covered with elaborate tagging, blame it on Cornbread, the Philadelphian whom this doc identifies as the father of graffiti. If that origin story seems implausibly specific, relax; the doc also suggests graffiti is as old as humankind (cave paintings, Alexander the Great writing on the pyramids, Romans scribbling in the Coliseum, etc.).

Reiss, who did similar work on rave culture in 1999’s Better Living Through Circuitry, clearly sides with the artists, but the opposition is given some screentime to suggest that all this spray paint is ruining public space for the sake of individual expression. Special attention is paid to New York’s anti-tagging movement and the “quality of life” laws used to jail taggers.

The taggers’ argument, clearly presented here, runs that public space is there for the taking, and graffiti is an expression of political protest and the artistic soul. That’s a fair enough position to take (local boy William Upski Wimsatt argued cogently for the power of graffiti in Bomb the Suburbs), and if you’re sympathetic to the filmmaker’s stance, you’re likely to enjoy it. If you’re coming at it as a skeptic, you’ll find plenty to argue with, which can also be a good thing in a doc.