Berlinale: BLANK CITY - the New York No Wave film scene revisited

Céline Danhier’s documentary BLANK CITY uncovers amazing footage of Super 8 and 16mm film gems made in the late 1970s and early 1980s in downtown (Lower Eastside) New York. At that time, New York City was practically bankrupt (the federal government refused a bailout, somewhat comparable to the German Federal Court denying Berlin Mayor Klaus Wowereit’s request for financial aid) and in a state of urban decay and social strife. From this despair emerged a highly creative scene of filmmakers, musicians and artists - art as the only way out? (more…)

Original inspiration of Poe’s EMPIRE II - Warhol’s “Empire” playing Club Transmediale

Watch the inspiration of Amos Poe’s Warhol homage EMPIRE II at Club Transmediale:

“Groupshow presents an 8-hour performance with Andy Warhol’s film ‘Empire’, a marathon event which dissolves into a hybrid of audiovisual installation and concert. Here, improvisation as a process-based art form meets a cinematic study of time unfolding. The single-shot recording of New York’s Empire State Building was filmed on the night of July 25th, 1964, from 20:06 pm to 2:42 am. Warhol slowed down the number of frames per minute, giving the film a length of 8 hours and 6 min. ‘Groupshow with Empire’ is part of the ‘Warhol Series’ commissioned by the Unsound 2008 festival, a series of works giving new musical settings to Warhol films.” (more…)

we have to change our conception of what counts as an event

David Bordwell about Amos Poe´s EMPIRE II on davidbordwell.net, Part 2

When the weather changes, the light does too. Raindrops become not only a pebbly surface on the windows but tiny filters. As with Warhol’s films, we have to change our conception of what counts as an event. Slight differences of framing and texture become visual epiphanies. Rain can be gray-green, and snow can go pale red. At times, the steeple clock face in the lower right becomes an imperturbable timekeeper, a sort of pictorial timecode, reminiscent of the clock in the corner of the shots of Robert Nelson’s Bleu Shut.

FILM: EMPIRE II

Warhol was withdrawn … Poe turned on

David Bordwell about Amos Poe´s EMPIRE II on davidbordwell.net, Part 1

Warhol was withdrawn and impersonal, but Poe turned on the camera when he spotted something that looked interesting. He felt free to focus, reframe, zoom, and shift camera position for different angles on the life beyond his balcony. Likewise, the automaton Warhol (”I’d like to be a machine”) is counterposed to Poe’s more organic sensibility. He never lets us forget the flowers twitching on his windowsill, and their growth and rearrangements become traces of his daily life in the apartment.

FILM: EMPIRE II