New York in the late 1980s and early ’90s was a moment waiting for a spark, an era looking for an identity. Then two potent subcultures found themselves on a collision course and would soon blur traditional cultural lines to create something new: skateboarding and hip hop were converging. The first was a predominantly white pastime, originally from the West Coast. The second came out of the Bronx and was a predominantly Black art form. But in a cultural Big Bang, they merged to create a street-inspired youth phenomenon that birthed a new kind of style and visual language in downtown Manhattan.

In the immersive and kaleidoscopic documentary ALL THE STREETS ARE SILENT, director Jeremy Elkin captures the artistic language that bridges hip hop, skateboarding, and street culture and paints a portrait of ’90s New York through more than 30 original interviews with skateboarders, rappers, and other musicians, graffiti artists, photographers, writers, and filmmakers, using exclusive footage and photographs from the era to bring an extraordinary time period back to life. Containing never-before-seen material — including what may be the very first footage of several major hip-hop artists like Jay-Z, Method Man, and Busta Rhymes — ALL THE STREETS ARE SILENT documents the confluence of two movements that would evolve into today’s now-dominant social and cultural styles.