LA Originals

Estevan Oriol's 2020 documentary tells how he and the tattoo artist Mister Cartoon came out of East Los Angeles and shaped the visual language of hip hop and street culture. Oriol is a photographer, Cartoon a tattooist and graphic designer, and the Chicano aesthetic they built together spread from the 1990s onward across album covers and sportswear brands alike. Snoop Dogg, Eminem and Mark Hoppus appear to describe that influence. The documentary's most valuable asset is its archive: the photographs and video Oriol shot himself form an internal record of a subculture. Its weakness is that Oriol is both director and subject; the film slides into an exercise in self-account, with criticism or contradiction barely entering. The question of how Chicano culture was commercialised passes unasked. Who it's for: viewers interested in Chicano art, tattoo culture and the 1990s Los Angeles hip hop scene. Who it's not for: anyone wary of documentaries in which the director tells his own story, or who will find the romanticising of gang culture uncomfortable.