NO WAVE CINEMA

By: Grey Daisies

There are no new waves, there is only the ocean. – Jean-Luc Godard

Primarily seen as an art movement (actually it was more a product of its time than a ‘movement’), No Wave or New Cinema flourished in the Lower East Side and East Village, New York between the years 1976 and 1984. No Wave was a collaborative effort by artists, musicians and filmmakers to strip their media of all ornament, commerce and convention and break the bonds of ‘genre.’ In music, jazz, pop, rock and funk all fused with atonality and outright noise. Filmmakers used whatever equipment they could find, borrow or steal to create fast and dirty films that challenged and confronted their audiences with images of violence, bordedom and confusion.

French New Wave, Jack Smith’s Flaming Creatures, Warhol’s films, and the early films of John Waters all laid the groundwork for No Wave cinema, in which artist-hipsters armed with cheap Super 8 cameras launched an incestuous, collaborative, creatively promiscuous movement based on DIY resourcefulness, proud amateurism, and arty attempts at narrative. As musician/actor/director John Lurie puts it, “No one was doing what they knew how to do. Painters were in bands; musicians were making art or films.” The young Debbie Harry, Richard Hell, Steve Buscemi, Vincent Gallo, Ann Magnuson, and Jean-Michel Basquiat are frequent cast members in the films, all part of the glorious social-aesthetic cluster-fuck of the era.

If it’s not transgressive, it’s not underground. It has to be threatening the status quo by
doing something surprising, not just imitating what’s been done before.” – Nick Zedd

Responding to the reactionary mood of Reaganite America, Nick Zedd, Lydia Lunch, Richard Kern, Casandra Stark, and others began in 1984 to make more brutally confrontational gutter films that trafficked in extreme sex and violence, dubbed the Cinema of Transgression after a pseudonymously penned manifesto by Nick Zedd. The merits of some of these films are dubious, but recalling the cultural repressiveness of the ’80s, they seem in retrospect a necessary corrective.

- Further readings (Books, Articles):

No Wave (Marc Masters)
No Wave: Post-Punk. Underground. New York. 1976-1980. (Thurston Moore, Byron Coley)
New York Noise: Art and Music from the New York Underground 1978-88 (Soul Jazz Records)
Captured: A Film/Video History of the Lower East Side: A Lower East Side Film and Video History (Clayton Patterson)
Deathtripping: The Cinema of Transgression (Jack Sargeant)
No Wavelength: The Para-Punk Underground (Jim Hoberman, Village Voice, May 1979)
Die Straßen sehen aus wie Kunst (Andreas Busch, TAZ, October 2003)
Keine perfekte Welle (Esther Buss, Jungle World, 2010)
Punk and No Wave Underground Film 1976-1984 (Harris Smith)
NO!: The Origins of No Wave (Marc Masters, Pitchfork, 2008)
Style Makes the Band (Glenn O’Brien, ArtForum, October 1999)
NO WAVE films (Early 80s NYC) (MUBI thread)

- Documentaries (Including Punk & Cinema of Transgression):

Kill Your Idols (Scott Crary)
LLIK YOUR IDOLS (Angelique Bosio)
Pop Odyssee 2 – House of the Rising Punk (Christoph Dreher)
No Wave – Underground ’80: Berlin – New York (Christoph Dreher)
Punk: Attitude (Don Letts)
TV Party (Danny Vinik)
No Age, New York (Nick Abrahams, Ana Cory-Wright)
Blank City (Celine Danhier)

- Cinema of Transgression:

U B U W E B : Cinema of Transgression
Cinema of Transgression MUBI list (by Roberto Reis)

- NO WAVE films:

NIGHT LUNCH (Amos Poe, Ivan Kral, 1975)
THE BLANK GENERATION (Amos Poe, Ivan Kral, 1976)
UNMADE BEDS (Amos Poe, 1976)
THE FOREIGNER (Amos Poe, 1978)
SUBWAY RIDERS (Amos Poe, 1981)
G-MAN (Beth B., Scott B., 1978)
LETTERS TO DAD (Beth B., Scott B., 1979)
BLACK BOX (Beth B., Scott B., 1979)
THE OFFENDERS (Beth B., Scott B., 1979)
THE TRAP DOOR (Beth B., Scott B., 1980)
VORTEX (Beth B., Scott B., 1982)
MOTIVE (Michael McClard, 1979)
ALIEN PORTRAIT (Michael McClard, 1979)
CONTORTIONS (Michael McClard, 1979)
THE SET-UP (Kathryn Bigelow, 1978)
PUNKING OUT (Maggi Carson, Juliusz Kossakowski, Ric Shore, 1979)
ISMSIM (Manuel De Landa, 1979)
RAW NERVES: A LACANIAN THRILLER (Manuel De Landa, 1980)
JUDGEMENT DAY (Manuel De Landa, 1983)
THE LONG ISLAND FOUR (Anders Grafstrom, 1980)
EMPTY SUITCASES (Bette Gordon, 1980)
WHAT IS IT, ZACH? (Bette Gordon, Tim Burns, 1983)
VINCENT GALLO AS FLYING CHRIST (Michael Holman)
BABY DOLL (Tessa Hughes-Freeland, 1982)
MUTABLE FIRE! (Bradley Eros, Aline Mare, 1984)
HEROIN (David Wojnarowicz, 1981)
YOU ARE NOT I (Sara Driver, 1981)
BLUE PLEASURE (Franco Marinai, 1981)
POMPEII NEW YORK (Ivan Galietti, 1982)
MINUS ZERO (Michael Oblowitz, 1979)
KING BLANK (Michael Oblowitz, 1983)
GAME (James Nares, 1975)
ROOF (James Nares, 1975)
HANDNOTES #2 (James Nares, 1975)
STUDIO PENDULUM (James Nares, 1976)
PENDULUM (James Nares, 1976)
BLOCK (James Nares, 1976)
RAMP (James Nares, Tim Burns, 1976)
TV FACES (James Nares, 1977)
ARM AND HAMMER (James Nares, 1976)
STEEL ROD (James Nares, 1976)
POLES (James Nares, 1976)
SUICIDE? NO, MURDER (James Nares, 1977)
ROME ’78 (James Nares, 1978)
NO JAPS AT MY FUNERAL (James Nares, 1980)
WAITING FOR THE WIND (James Nares, 1981)
L.E.S. (Coleen Fitzgibbon, 1976-77)
X MAGAZINE BENEFIT (Coleen Fitzgibbon, Alan Moore, 1978)
11 THRU 12 (Andrea Callard, 1977)
BARBIE (Tina L’Hotsky, 1977)
SNAKEWOMAN (Tina L’Hotsky, 1977)
ORPHANS (Ivan Lerner, 1978)
THE DEADLY ART OF SURVIVAL (Charlie Ahearn, 1979)
SLEEPLESS NIGHTS (Becky Johnston, 1981)
CAVE GIRLS (Kiki Smith, Ellen Cooper, 1982)
HELL IS YOU (John Lurie, 1979)
MEN IN ORBIT (John Lurie, 1979)
PERMANENT VACATION (Jim Jarmusch, 1980)
MASS HOMICIDE (Eric Mitchell, 1977)
KIDNAPPED (Eric Mitchell, 1978)
RED ITALY (Eric Mitchell, 1979)
UNDERGROUND U.S.A. (Eric Mitchell, 1980)
THE WAY IT IS / EURYDICE IN THE AVENUES (Eric Mitchell, 1984)
SHE HAD HER GUN ALL READY (Vivienne Dick, 1978)
GUERILLÉRE TALKS (Vivienne Dick, 1978)
STATEN ISLAND (Vivienne Dick, 1978)
BEAUTY BECOMES THE BEAST (Vivienne Dick, 1979)
LIBERTY’S BOOTY (Vivienne Dick, 1980)

- Poster wall:

Online exhibition: No Wave — LUX

To mark the publication of Between Truth and Fiction: The Films of Vivienne Dick and the artist’s current exhibition at the Crawford Art Gallery Cork, this month’s online exhibition at LUX features work from and about the ‘No Wave’ underground movement formed in New York’s Lower East Side in the late 1970s and early 1980s. As a music and art scene, ‘No Wave’ embraced a low-budget, no-aesthetic, stripped down industrial post-punk style often centered around performance and counter-cultural confrontation. Artists/musicians involved with the movement include Lydia Lunch, Suicide, Richard Kern, Amos Poe, Nick Zedd, Teenage Jesus & the Jerks, Arto Lindsay, DNA and Thurston Moore/Sonic Youth, some of whom are captured by the films in our selection: Dick’s Guerrillère Talks, Beth B and Scott B’s Letters to Dad and Nick Abraham’s documentary, No Age New York.

Profile: No Wave — 56th International Short Film Festival Oberhausen (29 April – 4 May 2010)

The productions were cheap, the actors and actresses irreverent, and film took its cue from the underground music scene. New York from 1978 to 1982: while the city virtually lay in ruins, a young generation hoisted the “No Wave” banner, striving to break out of the climate of decline. This programme brings together the most important Super 8 and video works made during this period. Featuring films by Vivienne Dick, Beth & Scott B as well as the European premieres of works by John Lurie and others. In cooperation with the Austrian Film Museum, Vienna. ⇒ Timetable