UnionArts
- Proudly Presents -
Freight rider and van tramp, Bill Daniel
is back on tour screening his 16-years-in-the-making, documentary film,
"Who is Bozo Texino?" --- the secret history of hobo graffiti. This gritty black and
white travelogue —shot entirely on film-- tells the mostly-factual account of
the epic quest and unlikely discovery of railroading's most mysterious artist.
In 1987 Daniel and his trusty Bolex camera began hanging out in hobo jungles and riding
freights across the West, looking for clues to the identity of a strange boxcar
graffito. While gathering interviews and discovering clues to the identities of
many of the most legendary boxcar artists, Daniel discovered a vast underground
folkloric practice that has existed with little notice for over a century.
Today these drawings live on as a new breed of hobos have taken to the rails
and kept the tradition of "moniker chalking" alive. This artform provides unlikely common ground between mostly
conservative railworkers and old school tramps and
the kids whose approach includes spray cans and punk lifestyles.
"Who Is Bozo Texino?
is a great American movie, and its greatness is tied
up very closely with its American-ness. With this
brilliant experimental documentary, self-styled hobo film-maker Daniel places
himself firmly in the bootprints of Jack London, Jack
Kerouac, Walt Whitman, Woody Guthrie - a fine, long
tradition of American artists who look for their inspiration to the marginal,
the underclass, the vagabond and the outcast. Nominally a
chronicle/survey/history of boxcar graffiti (a tradition as old as the railroad
itself) and the men who create it, Who Is Bozo Texino?
soon transcends its narrow subject-matter to become a
gloriously rough-edged elegy for an
Unlike the overwhelming majority of
documentaries - even entertaining recent examples like Murderball,
Dogtown and Z-Boys and Stoked - Daniel's film manages
a near-perfect union of radical form and radical content, And it does so in
consistently accessible style: at first you're intrigued by the stunning
monochrome images captured by his self-effacing, sensitively-handled camera(s);
by the startling kineticism of his fluent editing
style; by the sheer range of voices, music and sound-effects we hear as he
tracks down a series of grizzled hobos and wisdom-dispensing
graffiti-'markers.'
- Monday, May 14th
9:00 P.M . $5 -
UNIONARTS
15 W. Union St. Basement
-
Local Works -
Art Opening and Artist Reception
7:00 P.M.
Chris Biester
Performing songs in The Hobo
Tradition
+
Accompanied
by Harry Partch
selections.
Food and Drink fit for a
Train Hoppin’, Moniker Scrawlin’,
King of the Road…