´Joe in the Tunnel´ is a documentary that depicts the birth of Iceland’s graffiti scene though the story of an elderly man who worked as a janitor in an underway pass tunnel.

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After the first appearance of graffiti in the country during the late 1980’s, Iceland graffiti culture was truly born in the mid 1990’s with American hip hop music’s rise to popularity. Authorities didn’t take kindly to this surge in graffiti paintings all over the city, which they considered vandalism, and soon banned graffiti altogether. But in an underpass tunnel near a popular city park, a popular destination for graffiti writers, Joe who was an elderly janitor, saw things differently.

 

After an incident in the tunnel involving three teenagers, an off duty police man and about fifty cans of spray paint Joe went to his superiors in City Hall and had them declare his tunnel a graffiti friendly zone, on the condition that he would become the curator of this new “art-space”.  The film Joe in the Tunnel depicts these crucial years of Icelandic graffiti, and shines a light on how it was to grow up around the turn of the century, though interviews with Joe, the “now grown up” graffiti writers and with the help of a lot of never before seen stock footage, recorded by the graffiti artists themselves.