Celine Danhier's essential documentary about New York's punk and post punk era of underground DIY filmmaking is an ecstatic examination of the artists who put everything they had into creating something original.
Obligatory interview footage with such no-wave scene-makers as Lydia Lunch, James Chance, Nick Zedd, Jim Jarmusch, Amos Poe, Ann Magnuson, and Becky Johnston reveal Manhattan's dire social conditions that allowed them to follow their dreams of making films on their own terms.
A plethora of clips from the black-and-white Super-8 and 16mm formats of choice, explicate cool cinematic material from filmmakers like Bette Gordon, James Nares, Richard Kern, Charlie Ahearn, and Eric Mitchell.
Now that greedy corporate YouTube has opened up the possibilities for anyone with a camera to make a film and post it for the world to see overnight, it's all the more inspirational to hear the stories about of a community of artists and musicians who seized the day to create films in Manhattan's burned-out Lower East Side.
The storyline leads to the Nick Zedd-led Cinema of Transgression that occurred in the '80s as a battle cry against a right wing agenda that successfully dismantled New York's cultural identity in favor of a real estate marketplace for the very rich.
"Blank City" an essential social study. It's an inspirational film because it celebrates the individuality of ideas, and how that climate prospers under social chaos. History repeats. We have something to look forward to, or at least to look back on with pleasure.
Not Rated. 93 mins.
