Amos Poe had already directed one homage to Jean-Luc Godard’s Breathless (his 1976 debut feature Unmade Beds) when he began production on the 1984 thriller Alphabet City, but the latter film is the one that really earns the comparisons it invites to Godard and the French New Wave as a whole. A member of the East Village “No Wave” movement of the late ’70s and early ’80s that also included Abel Ferrara, Bette Gordon, Jim Jarmusch and Sara Driver, Poe began his career with the seminal punk rock documentary The Blank Generation, and Alphabet City is a singular mash-up of […]
by Jim Hemphill on Jan 8, 2021Here are a few articles of interest I’ve stored in my Instapaper. There’s a new website for Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life, and it takes something of a transmedia approach. Chuck Tryon explains: As you enter the website, it invites you to follow one of two forking paths, the father’s way or the mother’s way, while a haunting, almost mournful score plays in the background. Once you choose, you encounter a split screen with half the screen filled by a semi-circle of video clips and the other a white space with some cryptic text that evokes a moral parable. […]
by Scott Macaulay on Apr 10, 2011Here’s a brand new clip from Celine Danhier’s essential documentary on the wildly creative New York No Wave film scene of the early 1980s, Blank City. Appearing here are Steve Buscemi, Amos Poe, Vivienne Dick, and others, and clips feature the Talking Heads, Eric Mitchell’s The Way it Is, and more. The movie opens April 6; for more visit the website. And watch this space for an interview with Danhier. And here’s the trailer, which features shots from my favorite movie of this era, Underground USA Blank City Official Trailer from Celine Danhier on Vimeo. .
by Scott Macaulay on Mar 28, 2011I thought I knew Amos Poe’s first film, but after reading his account of the early days of his career as well as Lower East Side film in general, it turns out that I didn’t. From his piece at Truly Free Film: My first Super 8 film, was a series of shorts made to the Beatles “White” album. I loved that record and came up with short stories or ideas for each song. My friends helped and “acted” in these films. With ”Rocky Racoon” I did single-frame animation, for “Dear Prudence”, I managed to convince the most beautiful girl in […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jun 11, 2010