Public Enemy’s Chuck D leads a cast of hip-hop icons and leading African-American and Latino cultural commentators as they chart the factors that led to the birth of the revolutionary art form of hip-hop in 1970s New York, as well as the creation of the seminal hit The Message. They evoke a picture of how, after the turbulence of the 60s and the civil rights struggles, desperate social conditions and the experience of countless dispossessed people of colour living in a city mired in crisis helped give birth to a new art form.
Exploring the pre-fame years of the celebrated American artist Jean-Michel Basquiat, and how New York City, its people, and tectonically shifting arts culture of the late 1970s and '80s shaped his vision.
Dreaming of a better future, an aspiring young DJ confronts his family struggles in the streets of Brooklyn.
Anthony ‘Blest’ (Mark Webber) is one of the most talented and notorious graffiti artists in New York City. Despite the tragic loss of his older brother during a nightly 'bombing' foray with a graffiti crew, Anthony has the same insatiable addiction. With the other members of his ‘crew,’ Anthony parties, shoplifts spray-paint and 'tags' virgin walls with his signature 'Blest.' He does his best to avoid run-ins with the cops and hostile rival crews, but he can’t avoid the pressure from his mother to attend college, and from his girlfriend to leave New York with her. As tensions rise, a physical threat from the cops causes the crew to intensify their bombing excursions, calling an all out war on the city. When the inevitable confrontation happens, a tragedy results that pushes Anthony to make a decision that has even darker consequences.
The film is a day in the life of a young artist, Jean-Michel Basquiat, who needs to raise money to reclaim the apartment from which he has been evicted. He wanders the downtown streets carrying a painting he hopes to sell, encountering friends, whose lives (and performances) we peek into.
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