About Us
Henry
Chalfant, Co-Producer of Style Wars and Tony Silver, Co-Producer and Director
of Style Wars. 
Tony Silver, Director/Producer
Tony Silver was a native of New York City, where he attended Columbia University and briefly pursued an acting career, before becoming the leading independent maker of movie trailers on the east coast. He began making his own films in 1970. Following Style Wars, he directed and produced a feature documentary, Arisman Facing The Audience, tracing the artistic and spiritual journeys from Manhattan to Guangzhou, China of Marshall Arisman, master painter, teacher, and storyteller, Marshall Arisman. Admired worldwide for uncompromising images of worldly violence and terror Arisman is seen as "an enchanter, a shaman," perceived as a painter of "serial killer syndrome," and the possessor of knowledge about the afterlife, that, says a colleague, he "won't tell us [about it], he's so fucking perverse." Silver's public television film Anita Ellis, For The Record documents a rare recording session by the legendary jazz-pop singer with the pianist Ellis Larkins. Broadcast on PBS and in England, Germany and Scandinavia. Silver's first film, The Miss Nude America Movie (1970), documents the strange journey of a wheelchair-bound boy, founder of Naked City, Indiana. The film was shown at the New York Film Festival.Style Wars Board of Directors
HENRY
CHALFANT
Starting out as a sculptor in New York in the 1970s, HENRY CHALFANT turned to photography and film to do an in-depth study of hip-hop culture and graffiti art. He became one of the foremost authorities on New York subway art and other aspects of urban youth culture. His photographs record hundreds of ephemeral art works that have long since vanished. To Chalfant's credit are three of the most influential documentations of aerosol art. He co-authored the book Subway Art(1984) with Martha Cooper and he co-produced the film Style Wars (1983) with director Tony Silver. In 1987 Chalfant co-authored the book Spraycan Art with James Prigoff, documenting the global expansion of graffiti. Each one of these documentary efforts have been embraced by the international graffiti community and they have served as cultural blueprints for graffiti art movements around the world. Chalfant also directed with Rita Fecher a documentary on South Bronx gangs, Flyin’ Cut Sleeves (1994) and he directed From Mambo to Hip Hop (2006) portraying two generations of Latino youth growing up in the South Bronx.
Lisa
Citron
Lisa Citron was married to the late Tony Silver. She is a board member of Public Art Films, Inc. and founder/director of (Out)Laws & Justice, a nonprofit organization dedicated to middle and high school students discovering where the “Code of the West” meets the “Code of the Street.” The purpose is to provide youth with tools to bridge the past with their present present-day issues of violence, equality, economic equity, racial and gender discrimination—the conditions of life in their worlds––and the world at large. To become change agents in shifting American values that mindlessly glorify violence to values that practice peace on the street, and the halls of power. Inspired by the capacity of youth to create new forms and new understandings documented in Style Wars, Lisa and Tony collaborated on a short film to showcase (Out)Laws & Justice. His untimely death left making a feature documentary about (Out)Laws & Justice uncompleted. Lisa’s work includes creating the millennium campaign for the City of Santa Monica, writing and a Bay Area-wide campaign for the San Francisco a Bay Area-wide campaign for the San Francisco Public Library, City of Poets, honored by the California Campaign for National Arts and Humanities.
Carlos Mare 139 Rodriguez
Sculptor/Painter/New Media Producer who has been a Graffiti Style Writer since 1976. His evolution into style writing sculpture pioneered a vision that had, before him, no reference outside of the painted subways of the time. Throughout his career as a sculptor he has consistently brought innovation to the genre’s aesthetic and vocabulary.
As an early adaptor of technology he brought Style Wars online in the early 90s and ultimately earned the prestigious 2006 Webby Award for his launch of documentary Style Wars website. He was an Associate Producer on the Style Wars double DVD release. Mare 139 designed the annual BET/Black Entertainment Award, given annually to entertainers, athletes and actors. Recipients include Denzel Washington, Halle Berry, Jay Z, Prince Snoop Dog, Beyonce, Kobe Bryant and others. In 2006-07 he worked closely with Director/Actor Robert DeNiro on the film The Good Shepherd as a documenter of ‘the making of the film’ and as member of Mr. DeNiro’s editing team. His writing has been published in Martha Coopers brilliant photo book Street Play that documents the imaginative ‘play’ of children in the streets of NYC in the late 1970’s. http://www.mare139.com
Raquel Cepeda
Raquel Cepeda is an award-winning editor, multi-media journalist, and documentary filmmaker based in New York City and born of Dominican parents. A cultural activist, Cepeda’s work focuses on issues affecting communities of color around the world.
Cepeda directed and co-produced Bling: A Planet Rock, a feature documentary film focusing on hip-hop and its obsession with diamonds. The film takes a hard-hitting look at how the flashy world of commercial hip-hop played a significant role in the 10-year civil war in Sierra Leone, West Africa and stars Raekwon (Wu Tang Klan), Paul Wall, Reggaetón king, Tego Calderon, Kanye West, and the people of Sierra Leone. Cepeda is currently working on a documentary project and social network exploring Latino identity through the science of DNA testing and genealogy.
Cepeda edited the award-winning anthology, And It Don't Stop: The Best Hip-Hop Journalism of the Last 25 Years, and is the former editor in chief of Russell Simmons’ Oneworld magazine. Over the last thirteen years, Cepeda’s writings have been anthologized, and her byline has been featured in People, The Associated Press, Paper, Village Voice, MTV News, CNN.com, and many others. Cepeda sits on the board of City Lore, the Style Wars Restoration Project and the Dominican Women's Development Center. Visit Raquel Cepeda by visiting http://www.djalirancher.com/
Sacha
Jenkins
A native New Yorker, published his first magazine—Graphic Scenes & X-Plicit Language (a ‘zine about the graffiti subculture)—at age 17. By age 20, Jenkins would publish Beat Down, the first-ever hip hop newspaper. Thereafter, Jenkins would go on to be the music editor at Vibe magazine, and write about artists like Kid Rock and 50 Cent for Rolling Stone and Spin.
In 1994, Jenkins would co-found ego trip magazine—hip hop’s most respected critical voice. ego trip would go on to produce two books—ego trip’s Book of Rap Lists (St. Martin’s Press) and ego trip’s Big Book of Racism (Reagan Books). In 2000, Jenkins was awarded a fellowship to the graduate school of journalism at Columbia University (The National Arts Journalism Program); it was Jenkins’ rich knowledge of the history of New York subway graffiti that would deliver him to the ivy league.
Recently, Jenkins has worked as a television producer, building his strong reputation as a creative via shows like Cartoon Networks’ The Boondocks (creative consultant) Vh1’s The White Rapper Show (executive producer) and Miss Rap Supreme. Jenkins released two books in 2008--Piecebook: The Secret drawings of Graffiti Writers (Prestel) and the New York Times best seller The Way I Am, Eminem’s authorized biography (Dutton/Penguin).
Steve Zeitlin
is a folklorist, filmmaker, writer, and cultural activist. He is the founding director of City Lore, an organization dedicated to fostering New York City – and America’s – living cultural heritage. He is a commentator for public radio, and is the author of a number of books on America’s folk culture, including Because God Loves Stories: an Anthology of Jewish Storytelling, City Play, and three books for young readers. He has documented, recorded and fallen in love with carnival pitches, children’s rhymes, family stories, subway stories, ancient cosmologies, and oral poetry traditions from around the world.
ADVISORY BOARD
Hyun
Kim
has extensive experience in print, digital media, editorial and marketing industries. He has worked with MTV, Vibe, Pepsi, Sony BMG, and others. He is currently a founding partner in LTD+, a marketing agency.
“Hawaii”
Mike Salman
is the founder of LTD Magazine and influencer marketing agency LTD+. His work in the music, publishing and marketing world includes Interscope, Belvedere, Nike, Mountain Dew, Electronic Arts and more.
