No Wave Cinema

No Wave Cinema was a Colab sponsored^[1] boom (1976-1985) in underground filmmaking on the Lower East Side neighborhood of New York City. Its name, much like its cousin No Wave music, was a stripped down style of guerrilla/punk filmmaking that emphasized mood and texture above everything else.^[2]

This brief movement, also known as New Cinema (after a short-lived screening room on St. Mark’s Place run by several filmmakers on the scene), had a significant impact on both underground film, spawning the Cinema of Transgression (Beth B, Richard Kern, Nick Zedd, Tessa Hughes Freeland and others) and a new generation of independent feature filmmaking in New York (Jim Jarmusch, Tom DiCillo, Steve Buscemi and Vincent Gallo), as well as the new movement of Remodernist film.

The filmmakers mainly associated with the movement included Amos Poe, Eric Mitchell, Beth B and Scott B, Vivienne Dick, John Lurie, Becky Johnston, and James Nares.

In 2011, French filmmaker Céline Danhier made a documentary film on No Wave entitled BLANK CITY. BLANK CITY weaves together an oral history of the No Wave Cinema and Cinema of Transgression movements through compelling interviews with the luminaries who began it all. Featured players include acclaimed directors Jim Jarmusch and John Waters, actor-writer-director Steve Buscemi, Blondie’s Debbie Harry, Hip Hop legend Fab 5 Freddy, Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth, photographer Richard Kern as well as Amos Poe, James Nares, Eric Mitchell, Susan Seidelman, Beth B, Scott B, Charlie Ahearn and Nick Zedd. Fittingly, the soundtrack includes: Patti Smith, Television, Richard Hell & The Voidoids, James Chance and the Contortions, The Bush Tetras, Sonic Youth and many more.^[3]

See also

• Cinema of the world
• Experimental film
• Underground film

References

1. ^ Marc Masters, (2007) No Wave, Black Dog Publishing, London, p. 141
2. ^ N.B. Factual inconsistency in the narrative: Amos Poe's first films were made in 1976 prior to the formation of Colab in 1978, so they could not have been sponsored by Colab. What the writer may be referring to is the fact that the three co-founders of New Cinema, Eric Mitchell, Becky Johnston and James Nares each received $200 from a film workshop grant to the Green Corp, which they contributed to the start-up of New Cinema, a storefront at 12 St Mark's Place. Green Corp was later renamed Collaborative Projects or Colab.
3. ^ "Blank City" - official film website

External links

• Official Myspace page for "Llik your idols", a documentary about the Cinema of Transgression & No Wave Cinema