Friday, October 1, 2010

Raw Stock: No Wave Films from Downtown NYC, 1976-1984



Our friend Karate Boogaloo points us to some rare No Wave screenings tonight and next Friday in Brooklyn:

Here's the description:

Selected screenings from New York’s own explosive yet fleeting era of filmmaking known as “No Wave” Cinema. Rising from the ashes of a bankrupt and destitute 1970’s Manhattan, and reacting to the modernist aesthetic of 1960’s avant-garde film, No Wave filmmakers threw out the rules and embraced their own brand of vanguard moviemaking. Inspired by the films of Warhol, Jack Smith, John Waters and The French New Wave many of the films combined elements of documentary and loose narrative structure with stark, at times confrontational imagery. Much like the No Wave music of the period from which the movement garnered its label, these filmmakers freed themselves of the constraints of formal training and pillaged the nascent East Village arts scene for co-conspirators in the likes of Lydia Lunch, James Chance, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Debbie Harry, Richard Hell, Vincent Gallo, Steve Buscemi, Nan Goldin, Cookie Mueller and many others. With wildly varying styles, they shared the common mindset of fast and cheap, and catalyzed by collaboration. Equipment could be begged, borrowed or stolen, your friends could be your actors and the city, abandoned and free to roam, could be your set.


Louis V E.S.P.
140 Jackson St, #4D (Take the L to Graham Avenue)
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