No Wave
New York 1976-84

 

Production was cheap, the actors were snotty, and the films took their cues from the underground music scene. New York from 1976 to 1984: while the city virtually lay in ruins, a young generation hoisted the “No Wave” banner, striving to break out of the climate of decline.With Super-8 cameras and often primitive directing techniques, the group created a “New Wave of content-rich, performance-oriented narrative films” (J. Hoberman). Key to its development was the do-it-yourself ethic, which stemmed from punk music and specifically its New York successor known as “No Wave”. There was also a strong desire to “cross over”, or as musician and actor John Lurie put it: “Everyone did what they couldn’t.” Musicians appeared in movies, filmmakers formed bands, and artists felt at home in non-artistic settings. Some of the figures who crossed this scene would later become important directors, such as Jim Jarmusch, Kathryn Bigelow, or Abel Ferrara.

 

This presentation includes several programs of short films: works by John Lurie, Vivienne Dick, Michael McClard, Beth B & Scott B, James Nares, Andrea Callard (and many others) are organized according to themes such as music, violence, sexuality, and (ironic or nihilistic) self-portraiture. But the “No Wave” ethos also produced several feature films. They first emerged on Super-8 but soon embraced more ambitious production formats. While films such as Rome ’78 are still heavily indebted to the Warholian camp ethos (in his vision of the decaying Roman empire, James Nares employed a who’s who of the scene), later works such as Vortex (Beth B & Scott B), Subway Riders (Amos Poe), King Blank (Michael Oblowitz) and Variety (Bette Gordon) tend to glance towards more “classical” forms – most notably the tradition of film noir, whose settings and aura of paranoia perfectly corresponded with the climate of the era.