Our friend Marc H. Miller passes along word about the latest edition to the 98 Bowery website ...
NO WAVE AND INDEPENDENT FILM, 1976-1985
AN EXHIBITION OF PHOTOGRAPHY AND EPHEMERA
Because the photos were intended as advertisement, they effectively capture the essence of the films; and, in most cases, the filmmakers were themselves involved in the making and selection of the still images. These stills stand on their own, not only as vivid reflections of the films but also of the broader 1970s zeitgeist that the films consciously sought to embody.
Films by Amos Poe ~ Scott B & Beth B ~ Charle Ahearn ~ Richard Kern ~ Gordon Stevenson ~ Eric Mitchell
I had to remove the video box ... it was on auto-play...
"Blank City: The No Wave Years," a documentary about New York's DIY film scene, opens April 6 here.
Focusing on the mid-70s and 80s No Wave movement in New York, Celine Danhier’s new documentary paints a vivid portrait of the underground scene through interviews with its most notable fixtures: John Waters, Jim Jarmusch, Amos Poe, Vivienne Dick, and John Lurie among them. “New York was a very different and dangerous place to live then, like the Wild West,” says Danhier, whose film also references the East Village institutions that served as the genre’s unofficial headquarters, including the Mudd Club and CBGB. “It was run-down and almost bankrupt. But from that, this amazing do-it-yourself attitude grew.”
The clip above shows Steve Buscemi, Vincent Gallo and Mark Boone Junior in "The Way It Is" from 1985.
Via Nowness. Thanks to Shawn Chittle for the link.
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)
Noelia Santos caught "Blank City" Saturday night at the Tribeca Film Festival. Here's how Santos describes the documentary by Celine Danhier for MovieMaker Magazine: "It is an enjoyable chronicle of the giddy, nihilistic moviemaking style that emerged alongside the No Wave music scene of late 1970s/early 1980s in New York."
Here's more from the article by Santos:
Some of the best quotes she gets come from today’s well-known indie actors and directors who emerged from or alongside the downtown New York art scene of the late '70s-early ‘80s . . . like Jim Jarmusch, whose early films like 'Permanent Vacation' and 'Stranger Than Paradise' featured his friends hanging out in their run-down apartments and walking the streets of the then-dilapidated Lower East Side. Instead of lamenting the co-option of downtown DIY culture into mainstream condo living, he notes that 'New York was always about trade, commerce and thievery' — and that it remains a hotbed for con artists (whether small-time hustlers or real estate developers) and more importantly, fresh ideas.
In talking with several of these moviemakers afterwards, it seemed the freshness still hasn’t worn off. Michael Oblowitz (1983’s King Blank) is still making movies. Nick Zedd is now painting and getting into fashion design. But some, like James Chance, are probably simply inspiring others to be themselves.
Here's how "Blank City" is described in the Tribeca Film Festival program by Cara Cusumano:
New York City in the late 1970s. Underground filmmakers collaborated with experimental musicians and vanguard performance artists, all on a shoestring budget, to create the most daring work of their generation. In stark contrast to the poverty and crime that seemed rampant in the economically struggling city, a community of aggressive, confrontational, vibrant artists flourished: hole-in-the-wall screening rooms abounded, manifestos circulated, and Jim Jarmusch, Nick Zedd, and Amos Poe debuted early works to an audience of their peers. These short-lived but profoundly influential movements dubbed themselves "No Wave Cinema" and "Cinema of Transgression."
Director Celine Danhier brings energy and style to her encyclopedic documentary on the figures and history of this rich but gritty era. Blank City includes compelling interviews with such luminaries as Jarmusch, Zedd, Poe, John Waters, Steve Buscemi, Lydia Lunch, Lizzie Borden, Eric Mitchell, Thurston Moore, Debbie Harry, Bette Gordon, Glenn O'Brien, John Lurie, and anyone who was anyone in the late-'70s East Village art scene. Ample film clips from seminal works bring to life a time and a place lost to gentrification and commercialization in the '80s, but that lives on in a still-thriving tradition of avant-garde art.
After CBGB’s closed, the space remained empty for a year before John Varvatos moved in with a men’s apparel shop in 2008. He preserved as much of the original club as possible, with walls covered in graffiti and flyers, and rock memorabilia all around. “Thank GOD for John it’s not a Duane Reade,” Stein says.
Meanwhile, Danhier, who grew up in Paris and first saw New York watching "After Hours," had this to say:
In Danhier’s view, the East Village today is, “Construction, construction, construction. It feels strange because a lot of the new constructions don’t seem to fit with the landscape. I do think it’s very tame now. That feeling of being on the edge of something is gone. But, then you find other parts of New York to go to — areas of Brooklyn or a new place in Manhattan will open up — and you’ll feel that energy once again. It just is always shifting around,” she says.
P.S. Tix for the festival go on sale Monday ... though downtown residents can buy their tix starting Sunday...(They went on sale for AmEx holders Tuesday...) The TFF runs April 22 through what seems like November. (OK, OK -- May 3)
New York City during the 1970s was a beautiful, ravaged slag — impoverished and neglected after suffering from decades of abuse and battery. She stunk of sewage, sex, rotting fish, and day-old diapers. She leaked from every pore. [Expletive] was already percolating by the time I hit Manhattan as a teen terror in 1976. Inspired by the manic rantings of Lester Bangs in Creem magazine, the Velvet Underground's sarcastic wit, the glamour of the New York Dolls' first album, and the poetic scat of Horses, by Patti Smith, I snuck out my bedroom window, jumped on a Greyhound, and crash-landed in a bigger ghetto than the one I had just escaped from. But with two hundred bucks in my pocket tucked inside a notebook full of misanthropic screed, a baby face that belied a hustler's instinct, and a killer urge to create in order to destroy everything that had originally inspired me, I didn't give a flying [expletive] if the Bowery smelled like dog [expletive].
That's part of an essay by Lydia Lunch included in “No Wave: Post-Punk. Underground. New York. 1976-1980,” a visual history by Thurston Moore and Byron Coley. No wave gets the coffee-table book treatment this month. Ben Sisario at the Times takes a look at the book in today's paper:
Of all the strange and short-lived periods in the history of experimental music in New York, no wave is perhaps the strangest and shortest-lived . . .
With crisp black-and-white photographs and interviews with musicians and visual artists, the book is a loving reminiscence of a largely unheard period, as well as a look at a seedy, pre-gentrified Lower East Side. . . .
"New York at that moment was bankrupt, poor, dirty, violent, drug-infested, sex-obsessed — delightful,” Ms. Lunch said by phone. “In spite of that we were all laughing, because you laugh or you die. I’ve always been funny. My dark comedy just happens to scare most people.”
