Downtown 81
(AKA New York Beat)
With Jean Michel Basquiat, Eszter Balint, Deborah Harry.
US, 1981, 35mm, color, 73 min.
Basquiat was nineteen years old when he appeared in this portrait of New York’s downtown music and art scene, playing an aspiring artist wandering the city and trying to sell his paintings to pay back rent on an apartment from which he was evicted. After initial shooting was completed, the film was plagued by post-production problems and a portion of the footage was lost in Europe. After it was recovered in 1998, the filmmakers reedited the work in time for a successful premiere at the 2000 Cannes Film Festival. The postpunk soundtrack includes music by Kid Creole and the Coconuts, Tuxedomoon, DNA and Suicide.
PRECEDED BY
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Dante Quartet
Directed by Stan Brakhage.
US, 1987, 16mm, color, 7 min.
Print source: HFA
One of the most revered experimental filmmakers of the 20th century, Brakhage found painting on film was a potent means of exploring the “closed-eye” or “hypnagogic” vision that had always fascinated him. Six years in the making, The Dante Quartet is one of the dozens of hand-painted films that Brakhage completed in the last two decades of his life.
