Lyndal Cairns, "Censor Scrubs Graffiti Film," The Melbourne Leader, 25 September 2007

A FILM showing Melbourne's infamous 70K Crew graffiti gang hanging off trains and buildings has been pulled from a city film festival. They're brazen, forthright and absolutely convinced that scrawling their names on billboards and trains is going to change the world, experts say.

But the prolific 70K Crew are also criminals and the censors don't want you to hear their story. Melbourne Underground Film Festival pulled the documentary 70K on Sunday after the Federal Office of Film and Literature Classification warned the organisers that it was banned in Australia.

The film was shot by members of the gang, which includes the infamous duo Stan + Bonez and shows them hanging off trains and climbing buildings to paint their names. In a report written last year the Classification Board, part of the OFLC, said the film glamorised and tried to legitimise vandalism: "The combination of the filming, editing and addition of the soundtrack are such that the film is seen by the majority of the board to be a homage to the act of graffiti.'' The board provided a copy of the report to the Leader but did not want to make any further comment.

But festival director Richard Wolstencroft said the ban was an attack on free speech. "Snuff films and child pornography should be banned because they hurt people,'' he said. "(Graffiti) is a different kind of crime. No one is being murdered ... it's just a bit of paint on a wall.'' Joel Birch, the spokesman for the film's distributor, The Kingdom of Sad Machines, defended the film. "It doesn't glorify graffiti, it just documents it,'' Mr Birch said.

Graffiti art curator and City Lights gallery founder Andy Mac said the 70K Crew would one day be seen as pioneering artists and the film as an important cultural history. "On the surface, it looks like people writing their names but it's actually a sustained act of civil disobedience,'' Mr Mac said. University of Melbourne culture expert Lachlan MacDowall said the ban was "authoritarian and paternalistic''. "I have seen the film and I don't believe it warrants banning, although I think this is the case for almost all films in a democracy,'' Mr MacDowall said.

Full comment provided to journalist Lyndal Cairns

I understand the 70K film was refused classification by the Office of Film and Literature Classification in June 2006 over its promotion of criminal activity. As the film has been refused a classification, it cannot be legally screened in Australia.

However, I have seen the film and I don’t believe it warrants “banning,” although I think this is the case for almost all films in a democracy. The effective banning by refusing them classification is authoritarian and paternalistic. Also, in the age of the internet, the refusal of classification is also ineffective – in my experience, this film circulates widely on DVD and the Internet internationally and in Australia and has been viewed by many in the graffiti community.

Since late 2005 there have been a number of heavy-handed responses to graffiti in Melbourne, many of them connected to the 70K crew, so MUFF’s decision to not screen the film could be seen in this context.

From The Leader blog site

grumpyoldman Sep 27th, 2007 at 5:18 pm:
"The comments of Andy Mac and Lachlan Macdowall just go to show what sort of moron inhabits our art and university culture. No wonder civil disobedience is at an all time high when such overpaid and underbrained idiots get in to positions of responsibility."


Herald-Sun interview
The following responses were emailed to Mary Bolling, a journalist with the Herald Sun newspaper in Melbourne on April 28, 2007.

1. Will the proposed Anti-Graffiti Laws change graffiti culture in Melbourne?
Yes, the proposed anti-graffiti Bill will have an effect on graffiti culture, though it will do little to stop the amount of graffiti in Melbourne. Melbourne graffiti has always been very flexible and adaptable - no doubt graffiti practitioners will respond to the new laws in creative ways. We have already seen a shift over the last decade in the forms of graffiti in inner Melbourne, which now encompasses stickers, paste-ups, stencils, etc. Thus, the Bill's framing of spray-cans as prescribed implements will not prevent many forms of graffiti, though it will impact negatively on the civil liberties of a wide range of young artists using spray paint in legal venues (see my formal response to the Bill below). The archiving and display of graffiti on the Internet means that the swift cleaning of graffiti allowed for by the Bill is no longer a significant deterrent, and may in fact stimulate graffiti in certain areas.

2. How does the attitude of the Anti-Graffiti Laws fit into Melbourne's history of graffiti?
Over the last two decades, responses to graffiti in Melbourne have been highly uneven. While graffiti is sometimes framed as a significant social problem, requiring substantial public resources in policing, cleaning and diversionary programs, at the same time it is also tolerated, preserved or celebrated. Graffiti appears in a wide range of legitimate spaces in Melbourne, from advertising billboards and t-shirts, to walls and web pages. Many former and current graffiti practitioners also work as artists and designers.

The proposed Bill seems to be part of a very public and largely ineffective campaign to crackdown on graffiti writers, that began in the lead-up to the Commonwealth Games. At the same time however, the volume and creativity of graffiti across Melbourne has increased. Melbourne's graffiti has been recognised internationally and continues to be part of the creative fabric of the city. Since the late 1980s, many local governments in Melbourne have engaged with young residents who do graffiti and encouraged their skills and creativity. The proposed Bill is very much at odds with these long-standing initiatives.

3. Will illegal graffiti ever really disappear?
No. The forms of graffiti in Melbourne will change, but graffiti is an inevitable and necessary part of the urban landscape in liberal democratic countries. Even in totalitarian countries, such as the Soviet Union in the 1970s, graffiti could not be eliminated.

It is worth noting that the characterisation of graffiti gangs that appears in Residents Against Graffiti Everywhere (RAGE) [an anti-graffiti lobby group] promotional material is hysterical, inaccurate and absurd. Much of this highly speculative material seems to be drawn from the United States, where gang culture is very different. Indeed, the author has lifted sections of the RAGE document from a US website about ethnic-based gangs in the US military. There is no evidence whatsoever that these types of gang behaviour have anything to do with young people in suburban Melbourne. Graffiti in Melbourne is not necessarily connected to any kind of gang behaviour. (A simple Google search on the example of “187 Lil Weasel” will reveal the website from which whole sections of the RAGE material have been lifted, for example this site).