I am just slightly too late to talk about a film you should see called Blank City. If I wouldn't have been so lost in thought I would have told you to run to the NuArt and see it, but I saw it on its last day in LA and could have only told the passers by on the street to see the 7 o'clock and unfortunately I have a habit of not being crazy in public.
It is 1970's New York, when it looked more like a war torn country and not something here. When we let New York die. And the art that came from it, the Blank Generation and the NO wave. Super 8 cameras, bombing trains, stealing electricity and Nick Zedd, Blondie, Fab 5 Freddy, Lee, Richard Kern, Samo and Lydia Lunch.
Blank City is a movie about an art movement that came from a decaying landscape, people being creative with what they had, coming up with some sort of response to the people who let a great city die. Or just making films and art because there wasn't really anyone to stop them. (permits! permits! permits!)
Lydia Lunch, I remember hearing her for the first time when I was 16 living in the big city having left my sheltered small town life where I had no idea that anyone did anything bad to anyone, other than light teen bullying. In a writing class a girl brought in a record that Miss Lunch did. A particular story about incest that ends something like:
"That is what having children feels like"
I had never heard anything that had ever made me feel beaten up after, so emotionally wrecked. I can honestly say hearing this changed the way I thought about life... for better... for worse. If only my parents knew what kind of school they sent me to.
If you are interested in any of the films that came out of the blank generation or music from the no wave the will be showing some films at the Anthology Film Archives in New York in Septemberish. (I don't know why the schedule isn't updated. Maybe I will have to make an amendment once I locate the mailing) Or if you want to see the hip-hop side read Yes Yes Y'all.
(no photos due to copyright and the closed down businesses along Beverly Drive in Beverly Hills would never hold the same weight)
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