Downtown Film and TV Culture 1975-2001

Edited by Joan Hawkins

Publication date:

15 August 2015

Publisher

Intellect Books

Dimensions:

229x178mm
7x9"

ISBN-13: 9781783204229

BOOK DESCRIPTION
TABLE OF CONTENTS

Downtown Film and TV Culture 1975–2001 brings together essays by filmmakers, exhibitors, cultural critics and scholars from multiple generations of the New York Downtown scene to illuminate individual films and filmmakers and explore the creation of a Downtown Canon, the impact of AIDS on younger filmmakers, community access to cable television broadcasts, and the impact of the historic downtown scene on contemporary experimental culture. The book includes J. Hoberman’s essay ‘No Wavelength: The Parapunk Underground’, as well as historical essays by Tony Conrad and Lynne Tillman, interviews with filmmakers Bette Gordon and Beth B, and essays by Ivan Kral and Nick Zedd.

Downtown Cinema Revisited - Joan Hawkins

Acknowledgements

Downtown Body - Ward Shelley

Part I: Moments

Chapter 1: In the Movie-Viewing Machine: Essential Cinema and the 1970s - David Sterritt

Chapter 2: No Wavelength: The Para-Punk Underground - J. Hoberman

Chapter 3: At Last Real Movies: Super 8 Cinema from New York - Tony Conrad

Chapter 4: Downtown’s Room in Hotel History - Lynne Tillman

Part II: Scenes

Chapter 5: The Blank Generation and Punk/Downtown History - Mark Benedetti

Chapter 6: Birth of the Blank Generation - Ivan and Cindy Kral

Chapter 7: Downtown Godard - Jonathan Everett Haynes

Chapter 8: ‘A Crack in the Veneer’: A Conversation with Beth B - Beth B and Joan Hawkins

Chapter 9: Lydia Lunch, The Right Side of My Brain - Chuck Kleinhans

Chapter 10: Pleasure and Danger: Bette Gordon’s Variety - Joan Hawkins

Chapter 11: Interview with Bette Gordon - Bette Gordon and Joan Hawkins

Chapter 12: The Time of His Life: Spalding Gray - Laurie Stone

Chapter 13: Mixing Blag Flag, DIY, Lo-Fi, and Oulipo: Jon Moritsugu’s Mommy Mommy Where’s My Brain - Jack Sargeant

Chapter 14: Cast Iron TV and Friends: Artists’ Public Access in Manhattan - Terese Svoboda

Chapter 15: TV Party: A Cocktail Party That Could Also be a Political Party - Benjamin Olin

Chapter 16: The Case of Electra Elf: Towards New Possibilities of Underground Counterculture in the Twenty-First Century - Nick Zedd and David Sjöberg

Chapter 17: Cock Worship: Todd Haynes, Fassbinder, and Queer Praxis - Chris Dumas

Chapter 18: Downtown’s Queer Asides - Lucas Hilderbrand, Alexandra Juhasz, Debra Levine, and Ricardo Montez

Part III: Memorials

Chapter 19: Canonization and No Wave Cinema History - Mark Benedetti

Chapter 20: The Downtown Scene in the Digital Era - Laurel Westrup

Chapter 21: You Had to be There: The Downtown Archive and the Future of an Impossible Past - Richard Toon and Laurie Stone

Chapter 22: The Centre Cannot Hold: Blank City (2010) and the Problems of Historicizing New York’s Independent Cinema of the Late 1970s and Early 1980s - Juan Carlos Kase

Chapter 23: Experimental Film - Chris Kraus

Filmography and Videography - Mark Benedetti