Here’s a curio. Filmed on NYC’s Lower East Side in 1980-81, this slender fable follows a day in the life of a young graffiti artist and musician during his peregrinations through a now-vanished ...

Downtown 81, a newly released film (though the bulk of the footage was shot 25 years ago), presents a dramatic subset of New York art, fashion, and pop music that retains a darkly lit mysteriousness.

“If you want to be an artist and especially if you want to live in New York, you either have to be rich or you have to get a grant or you have to have a job. That’s not the way it’s supposed to be.” ...

“Downtown 81,” a film that has languished since it was shot back in 1980. The movie screened in the Director’s Fortnight sidebar at Cannes last year.

The film is a day in the life of a young artist, Jean Michel Basquiat, who needs to raise money to reclaim the apartment from which he has been evicted. He wanders the downtown streets carrying a ...

A collection of two announcements, one press-release nd one Japanese promotional book for the Basquiat movie Downtown 81 (published circa 2001).

Basquiat’s Art Career Took Off in Part Thanks to an Indie Film“All of the books that talk about Annina Nosei giving Jean-Michel his first studio, that wasn’t actually true.” ...