Presskit - Resistance films

RESISTANCE FILMS 2016©
CAPTURING A CULTURE
A photographic history of countercultures
A 13-part series of 6-minute films
Written and directed by Marc-Aurèle Vecchione
In cooperation with Jean-Marc Barbieux on the episodes featuring Danny Lyon,
and in cooperation with Mathieu Brunel on the episodes featuring Glen E. Friedman
A Resistance Films production
APRIL 4th ON ARTE CREATIVE
SUMMARY
CAPTURING A CULTURE looks back at groundbreaking countercultures through the eyes of the photographers who captured their essence
and showcased their rebellious spirit.
Viewers barrel through the Sixties revolution with American biker gangs, dive into an England upended by skinheads, experience the wild excitement of the street cultures of hip hop and skateboarding. The series highlights cult photos that shaped the hearts and minds of subsequent
generations of rebels.
Five key photographers share their stories and works in this 13-part series. Each 6-minute episode analyzes the development and legacy of a cult
movement that was captured in photos that helped set the standards for the codes that now define today’s youth.
With Glen E. Friedman, Danny Lyon, Janette Beckman, Henry Chalfant and Gavin Watson.
EPISODE SUMMARIES
GLEN E FRIEDMAN
EP1: SKATEBOARD RADICAL
In 1975, 14-year-old Glen E. Friedman spends his days crisscrossing the streets of Los Angeles on his skateboard, his Kodak Instamatic dangling
from his wrist. From the schoolyards in Dogtown to the empty swimming pools in Beverly Hills, with his band of buddies known as the Z-Boys, he
unwittingly photographs the birth and development of the modern skating movement.
EP 2: PUNK ROCK ATTITUDE
In the early 1980s, from Los Angeles to New York, in sweat-soaked concert halls, in wild mosh pits amid ear-shattering decibels, Friedman captures
the new music that perflectly reflects his own life. Aggressive yet keenly aware, hardcore punk becomes the new soundtrack of young people in
open revolt.
EP 3: RAP CONSCIOUS VS GANGSTA RAP
In the late 1980s, driven on by the Def Jam label, the Hip Hop tsunami washes over America. Public Enemy, Run DMC, the Beastie Boys... all of
Rap’s future heavyweights will file in front of Glen’s camera. His mythic photographs and cult album cover shots help craft the movement’s unique
esthetic.
DANNY LYON
EP 1: LA REVOLUTION DES AFRO-AMERICAINS
In 1962, at 20 years old, Danny Lyon is one of the first people to document the birth of the civil rights movement from the inside. He captures
sit-ins and freedom rides, and even does jail time with Martin Luther King. His work is featured in the press and used as propaganda by the movement, helping push forward the emancipation movement that will give rise, 30 years later, to the first Black U.S. president.
EP 2: BIKERS HORS-LA-LOI
Starting in 1964, a 22-year-old New Yorker named Danny Lyon immerses himself in biker culture, cozying up to America’s first motorcycle gangs.
Five years before «Easy Rider» and three years before Hunter S.Thompson’s «Hell’s Angels,» Lyon describes the daily life of biker crews who chose
to live by their own rules, becoming the antiheroes of the hippie generation.
JANETTE BECKMAN
Ep1 : BRITISH ROCK TRIBES
Janette Beckman has built a career out of her encounters with musicians over the course of a lifelong journey through countercultures. This rock
loving photographer captured the tumultuous early days of punk rock in England, the Mod revival, the skinhead upheaval, and the Two Tone explosion. She was close with rock groups like The Clash and The Sex Pistols, who wrote the soundtrack of her youth. But Beckman also photographed
their fans: hanging out, slam dancing, brawling, expressing their rage and rejecting the Crown’s values and the British social hierarchy of the day.
Ep2 : HIP HOP AND GANG CULTURE
In the early 1980s, the pioneers of Hip Hop land in England on the first stage of a European tour. Janette Beckman immortalizes their U.K. visit.
The following year she is in New York, hanging out with up-and-coming Rap groups like Run DMC and NWA. From the ghettos of the Bronx to the
ganglands of Los Angeles, she documents daily life in this new American counterculture.
HENRY CHALFANT
Ep1 : SUBWAY ART
In the early 1970s, New York City is fast becoming one big graffiti canvas. Henry Chalfant rifles through subway cars looking for the best graffiti
works, from simple tags to wildly shaped and vividly colored letterings. At the time, he’s the only one who recognizes the artistic value of graffiti,
which is being erased as quickly as possible. The history of a new art form is being written and immortalized in his photos.
Ep2 : GRAFFITI WRITERS
After spending months on New York’s subway lines hunting for graffiti paintings that pop up there, Henry Chalfant tracks down the artists behind
the images and becomes part of their crew. Being photographed by Chalfant becomes a badge of honor for graffiti writers, who wake him in the
wee hours to say exactly where their newest works have sprung up.
Ep3 : GRAFFITI ART
Graffiti makes its way into art galleries, and once again Henry Chalfant is along for the ride. At the height of the postmodern era, he shares his
view of artists who are shifting directions and transforming their art.
GAVIN WATSON
Ep1 : THE SKINHEAD IDENTITY
Gavin Watson joined the local skinhead gang in his hometown of Berkhamsted at the tender age of 14. For the next ten years his camera was
always in his pocket, as he photographed skinhead culture from the inside, going well beyond the stereotypes.
His photographs get behind the shaved heads, the swastikas and the steel-toed boots, unveiling a complex culture with its very own codes, style
and attitude that will leave a deep mark on Britain.
Ep2 : SKINHEAD DIVISON
In the early 1980s, the skinhead movement is upended by a political radicalization that finds its voice in Oi music. The punk movement splits into
two camps: one a posturing that grows out of punk provocation, and the other a true political revolt. The split turns skinheads into full-fledged
urban monsters.
Ep3 : RAVERS
In the mid 1980s, house music floods over Great Britain and seeps its way into every culture. For Gavin Watson, caught up in the ultra-violent life
of the skinhead movement, raves become a way out, a ticket to another way of life.
LES PHOTOGRAPHES
GLEN E. FRIEDMAN
Skater of the mythical group “Z-boys”, Glen E. Friedman is the youngest photographer to skate culture. His work captures the skateboarding legends (Tony
Alva, Stacy Peralta, Duane Peters), hardcore punk (Black Flag, Minor Threat, Bad
Brains) and hip-hop (Run DMC, KRS-One, Public Enemy). His photographs are
the most important record covers of his generation, and were the subject of
numerous exhibitions at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York or at the
Berkeley Art Museum. His books, My Rules (1982) to Fuck You Heroes (1994)
without forgetting Fuck You Too (2005) Dogtown, the Legend of the Z-Boys
(2000), have been around the world. Political activist, always rebellious and
radical, he is also member of the Skateboarding Hall of Fame.
DANNY LYON
From his work in the Civil Rights Movement, bikers or prisoners of Texas, to the
Occupy Wall Street activists in which he said “find an echo of the sixties,” Danny
Lyon was a valuable witness of the racial, political and social struggles of the
second half of the twentieth century. His photographs, which are part of the
spirit of the “New Journalism” advocated in the Fifties by Tom Wolfe or absolute
realism of his friend Robert Frank, the style of an investigation initiated and
artistic as opposed to traditional conventions resonate well beyond cultures
and struggles he immortalized. He is currently preparing a major retrospective
at the Whitney Museum in New York.
JANETTE BECKMAN
Janette Beckman is one of the first to document the hip-hop movement, and
one of the few female photographers among a handful of specialist music and
subcultures in the 1980s Janette Beckman became a photographer when the
punk invaded England. Freelance for The Face and Melody Maker, she captures
the punk revolution of each side of the stage, both the big stars at the dawn of
their careers and their fans. After moving to the USA, she became the emerging hip hop photographer, signing covers and portraits of Public Enemy, Salt-NPepa, LL Cool J ... Now a renowned documentary photographer, her work runs
from the biggest cultural scenes of the time to the Latino LA gangs, through
new forms of style and music that are emerging today. Exhibited all over the
world, her photographs have been the subject of several books, including Made
in the UK:The Music of Attitude (2005),The Breaks: Stylin ‘and Profilin (2007) or
Rap: Portraits of and Lyrics a Generation of Black Rockers (1991).
HENRY CHALFANT
Sculptor, graduated from the prestigious Stanford University (California), Henry
Chalfant is both the witness and historian of graffiti. He photographed the graffiti for several years in New York from the excitement of the beginning. His book
Subway Art (1984), as the documentary Style Wars (1982) make for the first
time this underground art accessible to the general public. The photographic
work of Chalfant manages to reproduce the experiment, the excitement and
spontaneity of the early days of the movement. It reveals the world of graffiti,
its methods and claims, its logic and its codes. In 2012, he published Big Subway Archive, a new collection of photographs covering the period he has been
privileged to witness.
GAVIN WATSON
Gavin Watson grew up in a poor suburb of northwest London. At the age of 14,
when his father offers him a camera, he became a member of the Wycombe
skinhead. For over ten years, his band and himself are at all concerts, all gatherings of all fights. Gavin collect thousands of pictures of that time, as many
rare examples of skinhead culture emblematic of England Margaret Thatcher.
He published Skins and also Raving 89 about the culture of rave parties where
skinheads meet after the decline of the movement. After crossing the desert
that followed his departure from the crew, Gavin Watson returns to photography by chance. In recent years, he collaborates with fashion magazines and
brands stamped “skinheads” as Doc Martens or Levis.
TECHNICAL SHEET
Title: PHOTOS REBELLES
Genre: Série documentaire `
Director: Marc-Aurèle Vecchione
Scriptwriter: Marc-Aurèle Vecchione
In cooperation with :
- Episodes with Glen E. Firedman - Mathieu Brunel
- Episodes with Danny Lyon - Jean-Marc Barbieux
Producer: Sara Brucker
Lenght: 13 épisodes de 6 minutes / 80 minutes au total
Language: anglais et français
Coulor: Couleur
Production year: 2016
Original score: Chaze
A Résistance Films production
With the support from: Arte France
And assistance from: du Centre National de la Cinématographie et de l’Image animée
Release date : 4th April 2016
Availaible in : Français, Allemand , Anglais.
CONTACTS
Sara Brücker
Cell: 33(0)6 19 56 26 26
Mail : [email protected]
Marc-Aurèle Vecchione
Cell: 33(0)6 81 93 99 13
Mail : [email protected]
Resistance Films
42 rue Monge 75005 Paris