Special Screenings and Speaker Presentation of the  
Graffiti Verite' Documentaries with Filmmaker Bob Bryan 
 
 

To Book a Special Screening of   
Graffiti Verite' and to have Filmmaker  
Bob Bryan attend your Venue Event: 

• Cultural Center 
• Classroom Presentation 
• Film Screening Venue 
• Library 
• School Assemblies 

 

GV Screening Speakers Tour Flyer (pdf file)                           

THE ECHO CURIO 
1519 West Sunset Blvd. 
Echo Park, CA 90026 
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 27TH 2007 - 9PM 

Sometimes we forget what Hip-Hop is really about and looking at the world around us often makes it a concept that's even harder to understand. Hip-Hop seems to be everywhere. Hip-Hop clothing, Hip-Hop cars, Hip-Hop jewelry, Hip-Hop movies, Hip-Hop toys, Hip-Hop ringtones.  

Over the past decade we've seen a staggering flurry of Hip-Hop inspired consumer products. However, we must not forget that when we look at a billboard or a magazine ad, we are not seeing Hip-Hop. What we are seeing is how commerce and industry has been influenced by a culture. As director Bob Bryan reminds us in the fifth installment of his award-winning documentary series Graffiti Verite', Hip-Hop is not something that is sold at your local department store.   

With Graffiti Verite' 5: The Sacred Elements of Hip-Hop, Bryan travels to Cedar Rapids, Iowa to film a four day Hip-Hop workshop put on by students and faculty at Metro High School and inspired by earlier volumes the director's Graffiti Verite' series. While Iowa may be the last place on earth we think of when someone mentions Hip-Hop, Bryan quickly reveals that America's heartland provides the perfect setting for Hip-Hop culture to emerge and thrive in its purest form. Watching Metro High School students explore and experiment with elements of MCing, breakdancing, DJing and graffiti art, it suddenly becomes apparent how universal these building blocks really are. In one of the many interviews with workshop participants and onlookers, a man in his seventies previously unfamiliar with the culture, describes how he now views Hip-Hop to be in many ways analogous to religion. "The MC would be the pastor and the DJ would be the choir director", he explains.   

As teachers, parents and local residents offer their assessments, students collaborate over four days to paint a mural, put on a dance show, write and recite poetry and learn some Hip-Hop fundamentals.  

While many in the community are surprised and impressed with the results, workshop participants are excited and inspired by the Hip-Hop curriculum. In effect, Graffiti Verite' 5 successfully demonstrates the value of Hip-Hop as a multi-intelligence learning model through which students can express themselves and learn from one another while simultaneously building a variety of skills.  

Bob Bryan has even gone so far as to create a Hip-Hop curriculum teacher's workshop guide, a tool available to any educators who may be interested in taking a lesson from the director's latest film. An advocate of using Hip-Hop as a tool to bridge the growing divide between teachers and students, Bryan describes his time at Metro as revealing of the "educational value and liberating therapeutic power contained within the unique elements of the contemporary Hip-Hop movement".   

In the end Graffiti Verite' 5 reminds us what corporate marketers never learned and what some of us forget all too often. Hip-Hop isn't about what you can purchase or acquire to make yourself stand out, rather it is about what you can create or express to better yourself and those around you.  -Review by Alex (RiotSound.com) 

To learn more about the Graffiti Verite' Hip-Hop documentary series and director Bob Bryan please visit http://www.graffitiverite.com/home.htm  

GV5 explores hip hop in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, showing the experience on several different levels as it follows the students of an alternative high school through a four-day summer workshop. The workshop gives the students of Cedar Rapids' Metro High the opportunity to experience hip hop culture through its four elements: emceeing (rapping), deejaying, breakdance and graffiti art.  

By its basic premise, GV5 has a self-promotional element-- Metro High's faculty were inspired by Graffiti Verité in crafting their hip hop workshop. It's appropriate in a way, since arrogance (feigned or not) is always a prominent part of hip hop culture. Still, director/producer Bob Bryan does well to keep the film focused on the main point: hip hop's power to influence the youth in a positive way.  

Much of the film is comprised of interviews with students learning hip hop dance, working on a huge graffiti art mural for their community, and reading or rapping their own poetry. For some, the workshop is their first experience with hip hop; others describe it as a part of their lives from early childhood on. Students of all shapes, sizes, and colors come together to express their thoughts and emotions through hip hop's elements, and the byproducts are positive for the whole community.  

GV5's value as a document of cutting-edge urban culture takes a backseat to its examination of the hip hop experience through a neophyte's eyes. It does open with an interesting profile of Chrang, an insightful LA-based DJ, MC, and graff artist; it also profiles Paco Rosic, the spray can wizard who oversees the workshop's mural project. 

GV5 is a valuable in-road to hip hop culture for teachers and anyone in the community seeking to understand the phenomenon on a basic level, and a testament to the fact that the positive influence of hip hop is everywhere--even the red states.  -By Jeff Trainor, The Source Weekly  

To contact Filmmaker Bob Bryan or to view the Graffiti Verite' Hip-Hop documentary series  on-line, please visit http://www.graffitiverite.com/home.htm  

 

In the past years Multi-Award Winning Filmmaker Bob Bryan continously blessed us with his DVD series "Graffiti Verite". 

It all started with the first volume "Graffiti Verite': Read the Writing on the Wall" followed by "GV2: Freedom of ExpreSSion?", "GV3: A Voyage Into The Iconography of Graffiti Art", "GV4: Basic Techniques for Creating Graffiti Art on Walls and Canvas", and now available "GV5: The Sacred Elements of Hip-Hop", which reflects all the elements of the contemporary urban Hip-hop movement, as well as, its relevant background history and special uniqueness as a multi-faceted communications medium. These elements include Turntablism, Break dancing, MC’ing and Graffiti Art. 

In addition, the Hip-hop Curriculum Workshop Guide (which was simultaneously released along with the The Sacred Elements of Hip-Hop documentary ) includes hands-on exercises, which can be performed in a classroom or after school workshop setting i.e.: Teaching the art of writing poetry vs. the Oral and written traditions of Rap, MCing, the fundamentals of DJing, the basic techniques of Graffiti Art and the skills of the Breakdancer.  

"I realized there was a great need for this kind of creative and multi-intelligence educational approach, in order to connect with today's youth. Innovation and relevancy is a necessity! This was learned first hand by working with my own young boys in Elementary, Middle and High School," explains Bob.  

The fifth volume of Graffiti Verite takes you to Metro High School where Mr. Bryan successfully bridges the gap between rural and urban life and where he's even achieving that Gothic like people start to be interested in Graffiti and its culture. The Graffiti Verite series are not at all only for people interested in Hip Hop or Graffiti but also for older people/teachers or just anyone who wants to learn more about the art of graffiti and the state of mind of those young artists performing it. 

In the meantime Bryan World Productions are already accepting advance Pre-Orders for the next 5 volumes. So stay tuned! 
 

The DVD didn't even have the commentary that Oscar-nominated star Billy Bob Thornton did for the laserdisc edition....(article continued) 

Hollywood, California..., BWP Press...It has just been  announced that the entire catalogue of Bob Bryans' Multi Award-Winning Documentary Series GRAFFITI VERITE' 1 - 5 has been picked up by NETFLIX for worldwide rental distribution. The Graffiti Verite' Series NOW joins other outstanding Award-Winning Documentary titles like:   
Super Size Me, Riding Giants, Born Into Brothels, Metallica: Some Kind of Monster, Fahrenheit 9/11, Outfoxed: Murdoch's War on Journalism, The Fog of War, Control Room and Jerry Seinfeld: Comedian.  
  
The GV Series is NOW available for DVD on the NETFLIX virtual Rental shelf .  
  
And In another bit of good news, the GV Series Videogram Licensing Rights has been just purchased by a major DVD Distribution Company in Greece, for DVD replication in that territory (translation into Greek).   

Interested in renting Graffiti Verite' and Graffiti Verite' 3 Online? 
 
 

Graffiti Verite' 3 (GV3): A Voyage into the Iconography of Graffiti Art Rated: NR  
Utilizing a different style than the previous entries in the documentary series, GRAFFITI VERITE' 3 continues to examine  
the world of graffiti art while looking at the many languages and musical traditions that inform it.  
With a soundtrack featuring hip-hop, heavy ... [More]  

Sketch. Fill. Outline. Highlight. This four-step approach lifts Sano into a Zen state where the battle scars of a struggling artist  — fade beneath paint clouds. In the past two years, he has collaborated with fellow artists on numerous “mostly legal” murals on buildings, retaining walls and freight trains throughout the city. The gritty yet positive images he gilds, such as a Hiroshima girl emerging from an atomic haze (GV4:Basic Techniques for Creating Graffiti Art on Walls and Canvas), “is my perspective on the truth,” says Sano. “Hopefully it helps people see that graffiti is not just gang tags.” 

Sano, who was born in an eclectic Cleveland neighborhood sandwiched between a ghetto and an arts district, grew up during graffiti’s golden age. “The ’80s was the Wild Style decade, when ‘writers’ distorted letters into urban hieroglyphics,” says Sano, who took on his moniker in 1985. “I thought it was a pretty abstract set of letters and thought I would define it as an acronym, now meaning ‘Simple Art Nice Outlines.’ Sometimes I write it in kanji [Japanese script] and it means ‘spiritual ground’ or ‘essential foundation.’” He counts old-school writers Vulcan and Kase 2, who were among the first to turn NYC subway trains into canvases, and European masters Klimt and Cézanne as influences. 

After gaining local notoriety by organizing Cleveland’s first hip-hop conference and graffiti workshop at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, he moved to L.A. “to paint outdoors year-round.” To make ends meet, he also endeavors in graphic design, teaches graffiti workshops, including a recent seminar at SCI-Arc, and he was featured in Bob Bryan’s acclaimed film series, Graffiti Vérité. After 20 years of guerrilla art, Sano remains inspired: “It feels really good to paint big on any surface — wall, canvas or train. To put your ideas out there that big, that fast, is definitely a rush. It’s almost euphoric.” 
(Photo by Wild Don Lewis) 
View Japanese version of GV4 Video Clip  (Real Player) 

Targeting the influential young male so in love with skateboards, hip-hop and fluid movement, the Ecko Unlimited brand quickly amassed a fiercely loyal following." (entire article continued) 

Graffiti Verite'  
"This fresh and honest documentary dispels myths about the impact of graffiti art in American urban culture."  
--Ecko Unltd.com 
            

Home Media Retailing Magazine formerly known as "Video Store Magazine" profiles filmmaker Bob Bryan and the DVD Release of the Graffiti Verite' Series.

GRAFFITI VERITE' DOCUMENTARY VIDEO SERIES AWARDS   * National Educational Media Network "Gold Apple Awards"  * Council of International Non-Theatrical  Events "Golden Eagle Award"  *  Accolade Competition "Award of Excellence"  *  2003 Urban Independent Music Awards "Best Documentary"  *  AVC Regional CINDY "Silver CINDY Award"  *  Honolulu Underground Film Festival "Best Documentary"   * Colorlab Award "Outstanding Documentary"  *  The Communicator Awards "Award of Distinction"  *  Texas A&M Film Festival  "Audience Choice Winner  for Documentary"  *  Worldfest Film Festival "Political Issues Category"  *  The Freaky Film Festival  "Best Documentary"  *  Telluride Indiefest "Best Documentary Award"  *  Chicago Film Festival  "Silver Award" *  Videographer Awards "2001 Videographer Award"  * Accolade Competition "Art Instruction Award Winner"  *  2003 Urban Independent Music Awards "Soundtrack of the Year" *

	N E W S   A N D    C U R R E N T   E V E N T S

GV5 Video Order  Multi-award winning Filmmaker Bob Bryan takes his camera on the road (in search of Hip-Hop) to the heartland of  America. "I figured if Hip-Hop exists here, then it's pretty much everywhere!"

GV5: The Sacred Elements of Hip-Hop  Order Now Only $34.50  (VHS or DVD - includes Public Performance Rights includes S & H) *** $24.50 (VHS or DVD -No Public Performance Rights-includes S & H)  (All Videos are NTSC) The Hiphop Curriculum Teachers Guide and the accompanying Documentary Video  Graffiti Verite’ 5 : The Sacred Elements of Hip-Hop  Running Time: 42 Minutes  GV5 Graffiti Artist PACO ROSIC Photos "The Gazette" News article on GV5, part 2  "Hip-Hop High School"  The Wave Magazine article on Bob Bryan  Feature article on GV5 Screening at The Waterloo Center for the Arts, Iowa  Thinking Outside The Boxoffice - An Article on Indie Filmmaker Tim Greene and  Documentary Filmmaker Bob Bryan by Rodney Carmichael  Hip-Hop Curriculum

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