This is the first day of filming for the production, a biopic that "will celebrate the life, career and impact of the groundbreaking New York-born, Haitian-Puerto Rican American artist Jean-Michel Basquiat, whose seminal paintings and street art defined the Neo-expressionism arts movement of the 1980s."
"Cyrano" star Kelvin Harrison Jr. has the lead in the film written, directed and produced by Julius Onah. Harrison worked with Onah in the underrated 2019 social thriller "Luce." Onah also directed this year's "Captain America: Brave New World."
Expect this to be the first of many shoots around here, as Basquiat lived in the East Village for several years. Basquiat died in 1988 while living and working at 57 Great Jones, just west of the Bowery. He was 27.
Al Diaz, who grew up in the Jacob Riis Houses on Avenue D, started writing graffiti at age 12. As a teen in the late 1970s, he and Basquiat collaborated on a series of cryptic messages seen around the city signed from SAMO©.
In 1981, Basquiat teamed up with writer Glenn O'Brien and photographer Edo Bertoglio to shoot a scrappy film about bohemian life in Lower Manhattan. The project, with Basquiat playing himself, languished unfinished for years, until it finally surfaced in 2000 as "Downtown 81."
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