Style Wars is a documentary from 1983, directed by Tony Silver, focused on the New York street culture of the early Eighties. At that time the Big Apple was like a giant playground for the kings of graffiti, while breakdancers, mcs, djs and b-boys were shaking the city with new sounds and rhythms: the movie is a vivid, pulsating, real time portrait of that era.

The film is universally considered an important footnote in hip hop culture and New York City history. But – there’s always a “but” – more than 25 years after its release, this piece of history is threatened. The original footage, in fact, is damaged and fading.

Now Public Art Films started a fund-raising campaign to restore the original and to create a new high definition master, which will preserve the record of the first painted trains to its original vivid colours. The aim is to raise the necessary sum to restore the celluloid film and bring it up to the highest technical standards available today, in order to create a HD edition of the documentary. The original 16 mm negative will be transferred into full HD 1080p, after an accurate procedure of cleaning and restoring.

The film is already damaged but Public Arts Film assures “it will be possible to repair it, using digital technology, painstakingly working on each damaged frame”. But the most exciting news is that visiting the storage facility at the Academy Film Archives, lots of extra footage was discovered: wonderful scenes that didn’t make it into the finished film.

You can watch the whole documentary, in low resolution, on YouTube.