Blank City (Blu-ray)
New Cinema. New Wave. New York.
Out of Print:
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Also released as:
Blank City
for $24.20
Blu-ray Details
- Rated: Not Rated
- Run Time: 1 hours, 35 minutes
- Video: Black & White / Color
- Encoding: Region 1 (USA & Canada)
- Released: February 21, 2012
- Originally Released: 2009
- Label: Kino Lorber
Performers, Cast and Crew:
Featured: | Amos Poe, Ann Magnuson, Becky Johnston, Bette Gordon, Charlie Ahearn, Glenn O'Brien, James Chance, J.G. Thirlwell, John Lurie, Lizzie Borden, Nick Zedd, Patti Astor, Sara Driver & Susan Seidelman | |
Directed by | Celine Danhier | |
Composition by | Patti Smith, Sonic Youth, Lydia Lunch, Bush Tetras, Television, DNA & Contortions | |
Director of Photography: | Ryo Murakami & Peter Szollosi | |
Hosted by | Steve Buscemi, Jim Jarmusch, Deborah Harry, Thurston Moore, Fab 5 Freddy, John Waters, Richard Kern & Lydia Lunch |
Entertainment Reviews:
Rating: 3/4 --
As well as unearthing flavourful clips from films only determined cineastes have seen (War Is Menstrual Envy, You Killed Me First), French filmmaker Céline Danhier has reassembled many of the era's crucial players.
Full Review
Globe and Mail
Rating: 3/5 --
There's no denying that the decaying New York of the late-'70s/early-'80s was a fascinating proving ground for starving artists. And Blank City is great arty eye candy. But you'll appreciate it best if the skinny-tie years were indeed your glory days.
Jam! Movies
Danhier evocatively recaptures this gritty period of anything-goes creativity in the thorough, decidedly non-romanticized documentary BLANK CITY.
Los Angeles Times
[Danhier] illuminates a hectic and fascinating place and time, bringing it back to life and tracing its continuing influence.
New York Times
Celine Danhier's evocative, slightly elegiac documentary charts the downtown movie movement's scuzzy flowering, mixing new interviews with key ageing players...
Uncut
Rating: 3/5 --
The films emerge as fascinating period pieces filled with too-cool-for-school 70s types; but the most potent figure in the film is New York itself, decrepit but glowering angrily in the background.
Full Review
Guardian
The film is brilliantly edited, cutting between interviews, clips from the films, and archival footage of clubs and parties. The aesthetics reflect the strange world she is examining.
Full Review
That Shelf
Product Description:
Take a trip back to a time when New York City wasn't all glitz and glamour as filmmaker Celine Danhier offers a look at the birth of "No Wave Cinema" and the vibrant art scene that exploded out of the East Village in the late '70s. In the years before Ronald Reagan took office, Manhattan was in ruins. But true art has never come from comfort, and it was precisely those dire circumstances that inspired artists like Jim Jarmusch, Lizzy Borden, and Amos Poe to produce some of their best works. Taking their cues from punk rock and new wave music, these young maverick filmmakers confronted viewers with a stark reality that stood in powerful contrast to the escapist product being churned out by Hollywood. Interviews with the aforementioned artists as well as Debbie Harry, Steve Buscemi, John Waters, John Lurie, Lydia Lunch, and Thurston Moore reveal how a group of young visionaries pooled their resources to birth a film movement that produced some of the most challenging art of the 20th century.