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Jamie Nares and Thurston Moore holding up the hastily printed-out photos of the Harry Roskolenko chopped up death mask sculpture: “I called it The Poet Is A Book.” Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze

At the Ecstatic Peace Library Rock ’n’ Roll Round Table inside the Oak Room of The Algonquin on September 12, during the James Hamilton Linger On: Unseen Portraits of The Velvet Underground exhibition, music producer and 99 Records founder Ed Bahlman introduced me to Thurston Moore (co-founder with Eva Prinz of the Ecstatic Peace Library) and filmmaker/artist Jamie Nares (featured in Celine Danhier’s Blank City as James Nares).

Jamie Nares with Ed Bahlman and Anne-Katrin Titze on natural timing: “I’d say that the rhythm was the strongest characteristic of my guitar playing.”

In the first instalment with Jamie Nares we touch on Rome ’78, Pierpaolo Piccioli’s Valentino couture dress for Jamie, a party for Andy Warhol’s Athletes series,...

“Here it is,” Patti Astor shrieks. “Here’s my little gallery!” Astor is standing outside a tiny basement storefront at 225 East 11th Street in New York City's East Village, where she and partner Bill Stelling opened the original Fun Gallery in 1981. That was the year after she starred in Eric Mitchell’s landmark low-budget flick Underground U.S.A. and a couple years before her turn as a reporter in Wild Style, Charlie Ahearn’s celebration of early B-boy culture that features the graffiti artists Lee Quinones and Lady Pink Fabara, as well as hip-hop pioneer Fab 5 Freddy, Astor's then-boyfriend and a future host of Yo! MTV Raps.If you've never heard of Patti Astor, it may be because she’s one of those people who should take credit for things but doesn’t. Back in the day, she was more interested in making sure the young artists she championed — graffiti masters like Dondi,...

Title: Blank City Director: Celine Danhier Featuring: Steve Buscemi, Fab 5 Freddy, Jim Jarmusch, Deborah Harry, John Lurie, Thurston Moore, John Waters, Susan Seidelman, Amos Poe, Eric Mitchell, Ann Magnuson and more The angry, dirty and unforgiving streets of New York City have over the course of several generations taken on an almost mythical role in American independent cinema, fueling some artists, creatively bankrupting many more, and driving others into the arms of more lucrative, mainstream projects. An exhaustively comprehensive oral history of outsider cinema from the late 1970s and into the mid ’80s, Celine Danhier’s Blank City unfolds in all the hazy, erudite specificity of some breezy, memories-laden conversation between your parents...

By David Savage

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The generation of subversive filmmakers who emerged out of the rubble of Manhattan’s Lower East Side in the 1970s, who wrote, cast, produced and directed their own punk riffs on narrative feature films long before the digital revolution made it easy, has long gone without a proper documentary that chronicles their fascinating emergence during this era. Well, no more. Blank City, directed by French newcomer Celine Danhier, was one of the most talked about docs at festivals worldwide in 2010, and recently started its theatrical engagement at the IFC Center in Manhattan and across the USA at major indie-cinema venues.

Packed with film clips, period footage and insightful interviews with key players from the scene, such as Debbie Harry, John Waters, Ann Magnuson, Amos Poe, Eric Mitchell, Patti Astor and Jim Jarmusch, Blank City is a fascinating and inspiring documentary...

Blank City screened as a 'work-in-progress' at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2009 - it was both my first film and my first experience at any film festival. Blank City is a feature documentary that tells the story of the underground film movement in New York from the late 70s to the early 80s, and explores its ties to the East Village art and music scene of the period. So the Tribeca Film Festival was really the perfect place to showcase it for the very first time. We interviewed so many amazing people - Steve Buscemi, Jim Jarmusch, Debbie Harry, Sara Driver, Amos Poe, Eric Mitchell, James Nares, Fab 5 Freddy - and we had a lot of them join us for the Tribeca screening, which was great. Steve Buscemi had another premiere that night [Bette Gordon's Handsome Harry], but he took the time out to walk the red carpet with us and support the film,...

Here’s a brand new clip from Celine Danhier’s essential documentary on the wildly creative New York No Wave film scene of the early 1980s, Blank City. Appearing here are Steve Buscemi, Amos Poe, Vivienne Dick, and others, and clips feature the Talking Heads, Eric Mitchell’s The Way it Is, and more. The movie opens April 6; for more visit the website. And watch this space for an interview with Danhier.

And here’s the trailer, which features shots from my favorite movie of this era, Underground USA

Blank City Official Trailer from Celine Danhier on Vimeo.

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To celebrate the release of Essential Killing, the latest film from controversial actor Vincent Gallo – directed by Jerzy Skolimowski – we thought we’d take a look at “10 Things You May Not Know About Vincent Gallo”.

Vincent Gallo is widely known for his work as an actor but as a young artist he poured the majority of his creativity and passions into music, working alongside graffiti artist Jean Michel Basquiat in Gray, a 1970’s experimental music project, and in rock band Bunny with Lukas Haas. Mr Gallo has been around the musical block. As a young artist living in New York Gallo became known for impromptu street performances. He would invite a select few guests whilst the rest of the viewing public remained completely unaware of what was taking place. These performances included The One Armed Man, Boy Hit by a Car, and Boy Cries in a Restaurant. As an invited guest,...

Featuring Jim Jarmusch, Debbie Harry, Steve Buscemi, John Lurie, Fab 5 Freddy, Thurston Moore,

Richard Kern, Lydia Lunch, Amos Poe, Eric Mitchell, James Nares, Maripol, Ann Magnuson,

James Chance, Beth B, Scott B and John Waters

A Film By

Opening at the IFC Center in New York on Friday, April 6

Before there was HD there was Super 8. Before Independent film there was Underground Cinema. And before New York there was.well, New York. Once upon a pre-Facebook time, before creative communities became virtual and viral, cultural movements were firmly grounded in geography. And the undisputed center of American . some would say international . art and film was New York City. In particular, downtown Manhattan in the late 1970.s and 80.s was the anchor of vanguard filmmaking.

Blank City tells the long-overdue tale of the motley crew of renegade filmmakers that emerged from an economically bankrupt and dangerous period of New York History.

Featuring Jim Jarmusch, Debbie Harry, Steve Buscemi, John Lurie, Fab 5 Freddy, Thurston Moore,

Richard Kern, Lydia Lunch, Amos Poe, Eric Mitchell, James Nares, Maripol, Ann Magnuson,

James Chance, Beth B, Scott B and John Waters

A Film By

Opening at the IFC Center in New York on Friday, April 6

Before there was HD there was Super 8. Before Independent film there was Underground Cinema. And before New York there was.well, New York. Once upon a pre-Facebook time, before creative communities became virtual and viral, cultural movements were firmly grounded in geography. And the undisputed center of American . some would say international . art and film was New York City. In particular, downtown Manhattan in the late 1970.s and 80.s was the anchor of vanguard filmmaking.

Blank City tells the long-overdue tale of the motley crew of renegade filmmakers that emerged from an economically bankrupt and dangerous period of New York History.

(Filmmaker Susan Seidelman, above.)

by Jon Zelazny

In the early 80’s NYC cultural lull between Patti Smith’s retirement and Jay McInerney’s breakout, Nyu film school graduate Susan Seidelman did the scrappy shoestring indie film thing, resulting in her acclaimed feature debut Smithereens (1982).

Best known for her hit sophomore effort, Desperately Seeking Susan (1985), Seidelman continues to direct movies and TV shows featuring female protagonists… including the pilot for “Sex and the City” and her Oscar nominated short film The Dutch Master (1994), about a shy dental technician who ventures “into” a museum painting for flights of erotic fantasy.

Susan Seidelman: My husband Jonathan Brett—who co-wrote and produced The Dutch Master—and I had committed to living in Paris for a year because I was set to direct a feature for Polygram, a company that unfortunately went bankrupt. So we were kind of in a funk over there, and...