Unassuming and down-to-earth graffiti, anonymous yet personal tags on beat walls, have an uncanny tendency to gravitate towards desolate, forgotten spaces, paradoxically giving them some long-lost beauty. This well-crafted and suggestive short film by urban photographer and film-maker Charles le Brigand shows the splendour that comes from overlooked buildings and plain sprayed murals combined.
Featured here with nostalgic foggy edges is the vacuum of former New York Port Authority Grain Terminal, long laid to rest as so many other industrial units – a hollowness subtly filled with self-expression. The narrative Charles tells is uncomplicated and straightforward, delicate frames upon frames of building voids, but the way the graffiti patchwork hints of human presence long after the place acted as grain terminal is hauntingly artistic.
Directed by Charles le Brigand, who loves capturing the real essence of urbanity, or as he calls it, the “RottenbutBeautiful”. Low-key and emotive music by Zenzile (“Transit”), also Eduardo Cintron (“A Flower’s Shade”).
