'Stations Of The Elevated' Fuses Train Graffiti And Mingus

In the late 1970s, graffiti-covered subway cars were as much a part of New York City's iconic landscape as the Empire State Building. But the art form was mostly despised. Graffiti was criminalized by city officials, erased from subway trains, and ignored by the high-art community. Then in 1977, the radical filmmaker Manfred Kirchheimer documented those painted trains rumbling through the Bronx and Brooklyn -- and forever changed the way we view the medium. His 45-minute film, Stations Of The Elevated, premiered at the New York Film Festival in 1981, is now considered a cult classic among graffiti artists.

Set to a soundtrack of Charles Mingus and Aretha Franklin songs, the non-narrated documentary is one of the most revealing looks we have into New York City at a time when hip-hop culture was just starting to develop.

"In the summer, when the sun gets up early, I would take my car to the Cross Bronx Expressway," Kirchheimer says in a conversation with Soundcheck host John Schaefer. "The sun would hit these trains, either back-light it or otherwise, and there would be these beautiful streams of color. I said 'Gee, ya know, there's gotta be a film in that.'" 

Starting this Friday, for one week only, people will get the chance to experience Stations Of The Elevated on the big screen at BAMcinamatek. Kirchheimer, now on faculty at the School of Visual Arts in New York, reflects on the lasting impact of his film, its use of music, and why graffiti felt important.

Interview Highlights

Manfred Kirchheimer on using Charles Mingus to score the film: 

I discovered, going through records, Charles Mingus. I was not someone who knew him very well. So I bought all his records and I listened. He had died half a year before. And I swiped stuff off that, because Mingus would invent a song -- Fables of Faubus for example -- and it would be a complete piece from beginning to end, beautifully played with beautiful tone, and angry much of the time. 

On why graffiti felt important to him:

These kids, teenagers from poor neighborhoods, were surrounded by junk of all kinds and by advertising of all kinds of everything but themselves. And here they suddenly found a way to advertise themselves, to "get up" as they used to say. They are the elevated ones.