“SEMINAL… Wild Style is just as important a New York City musical as On the Town, so vital and exuberant are its scenes of a burgeoning cultural moment.”
– Melissa Anderson, Time Out New York
Click here to read full review

"Wild Style remains, to borrow a term from the rap lexicon, permanently fresh. In capturing the hip hop aesthetic at an early point of ferment and vigor, Ahearn's film was able to intuit what hip hop would become."
– A.O. Scott, The New York Times
Click here to read full review

(1983) Elusive graffitist Zoro (legendary artist Lee Quinones) has the South Bronx and the whole NYC subway system for a canvas, but fame threatens to blow his cover. Indie filmmaker Charlie Ahearn captured the very early days of hip hop in near-documentary style, casting real (and now-pioneer) DJs, MCs, graffiti artists, breakdancers, and rappers. With appearances by Fab Five Freddy, Grandmaster Flash, Grand Wizard Theodore, Busy Bee, Cold Crush, and Rock Steady Crew, climaxing in a raucous impromptu East River Park concert (filmed without permits!). Plus Ahearn’s short Bongo Barbershop (2005): a Tanzanian finds authentic hip hop in a Bronx tonsorial parlor.
10:00 ONLY*

*Listen to our podcasts:
Q & A with director CHARLIE AHEARN and guests
(Recorded November 14, 2008)

Q & A with director CHARLIE AHEARN and guests
(Recorded November 15, 2008)

* Director Charlie Ahearn in person at 10:00 screenings of Wild Style on Thursday, November 20. Ahearn will sign copies of his lavish new book, Wild Style The Sampler, in the Film Forum lobby beginning at 9:00.

“A time capsule unlocked… background shots of the war-zone streets that birthed hip-hop, long shots of beautifully and meticulously tagged subway trains, and in-your-face performance scenes set in palpably hot, sweaty makeshift clubs combine to give Wild Style an artful vibrancy that remains undiminished.”
– Ernest Hardy, The Village Voice
Click here to read entire review

“EXHILARATING… rare footage of Fab Five Freddy, Grandmaster Flash and all the spray-painters, rappers and breakers who helped turn hip hop from a South Bronx musical style into a cultural phenomenon.”
– Rolling Stone

“When it comes to hip hop and the cinema there’s only ever been one film that really mattered.”
– Hip Hop Connection

“A cult classic… a bona fide piece of cultural history,
undisputedly the most important hip hop movie ever made.”
– BBC

“Easily among the best musicals of the past half decade.”
– J. Hoberman, Village Voice (1983)

“Capturing a time and place when all you needed for entertainment was some Cold Crush Brothers on your over-sized ghettoblaster and a wedge of cardboard upon which to breakdance. Mixing early ’80s nostalgia with mild social anthropology, the film successfully crystallizes the optimism and vivacity of the early New York hip hop scene.”
– Time Out London