BLANK CITY Alt/Art

In. the late seventies, Manhattan was virtually bankrupt, leaving the crumbling tenements of the Lower East Side overrun with. squatters . Young artists – writers, musicians, actors, pointers and filmmakers – quickly formed a loose tribe built around a spirit of freedom and collaboration. From this cross-pollination come o vibrant cacophony of ideas and transgressive images seared onto Super-8 film. Today these films stand as raw and visceral testaments to the roots of punk, a guerrilla-film parade exploding the rules of sex, race, gender and politics through the crocked lens of a lost generation. In BLANK CITY, filmmaker Celine Danhier has gathered the faces and icons that defined the scene, including filmmakers Richard Kern, Susan Seidelmon, Nick Zedd, Lizzie Borden, Amos Poe and Jim Jarmusch, as well as performers Debbie Harry, Steve Buscemi and Lydia Lunch – granting us a brash insider’s take on this cinematic “No Wove.”