Hasta La Ideas

Colossal Media’s Sky High crew at work on the corner of Metropolitan & Driggs in Brooklyn NY (August 2013)

Sam Harris of the Ghostsigns project informs us that tickets for the London screening of the Sign Painters film are selling fast…

Set to screen at The Roxy Bar and Screen on Borough High Street on February 5, Sign Painters is a fantastic documentary on what remains of the working sign-writing community in the US.

It will be shown alongside Horn Please, a short documentary about Indian truck painting, and there will also be a Q&A with several contemporary sign painters after the films. Sign Painters has previously screened in Birmingham, Leeds and Falmouth, but this marks its first time in the capital. The trailer is here.

Since 2010, Faythe Levine and Sam Macon’s project has been to document the work of artists who have put brush and paint to storefronts, murals, banners, barn signs, billboards, and even street signs across America, but who have seen their skilled trade “overrun by the techno-fueled promise of quicker and cheaper,” say the filmmakers.

“The resulting proliferation of computer-designed, die-cut vinyl lettering and inkjet printers has ushered a creeping sameness into our landscape,” they continue. “Fortunately, there is a growing trend to seek out traditional sign painters and a renaissance in the trade.”

Sign Painters is, say Levine and Macon, the first anecdotal history of the craft and features interview with two dozen sign painters working throughout the US, from the new vanguard working solo to the collaborative shops New Bohemia Signs in San Francisco and Colossal Media’s Sky High Murals in New York.

Sign Painters is at The Roxy Bar and Screen, 128-132 Borough High Street, London SE1 1LB on February 5 2014, nearest stations are London Bridge and Borough. The film is showing at 7.30pm for an 8pm start, running time 80 minutes. Tickets are £12.50 standard / £25.00 with copy of the Sign Painters book by directors Faythe Levine and Sam Macon. Tickets can be bought online via the Ghostsigns page, here. More details on the film at signpaintermovie.blogspot.co.uk.