Jean-Michel Basquiat plays a version of himself in 'Downtown 81,' Edo Bertoglio and Glenn O'Brien's long-buried tour through lower Manhattan's art scene. By John DeFore We often say, of old movies we ...

Here’s a curio. Filmed on NYC’s Lower East Side in 1980-81, this slender fable follows a day in the life of a young graffiti artist and musician during his peregrinations through a now-vanished ...

A fairy tale with color and music is one way to categorize director Edo Bertoglio’s and writer Glenn O’Brien’s New York New Wave time capsule “Downtown 81,” starring the late, great Jean-Michel ...

Newly restored, the movie 'Downtown '81' features Basquiat as a struggling artist trying to sell a painting just to make rent. Basquiat in the trailer for Downtown 81. Metrograph NYC/YouTube ...

Jean-Michel Basquiat has become part of the mythology of the ’70s and ’80s art scene in New York, epitomizing the “struggling artist” trope even decades after his untimely death. Although he was known ...

The film is a day in the life of a young artist, Jean Michel Basquiat, who needs to raise money to reclaim the apartment from which he has been evicted. He wanders the downtown streets carrying a ...

“If you want to be an artist and especially if you want to live in New York, you either have to be rich or you have to get a grant or you have to have a job. That’s not the way it’s supposed to be.” ...

Downtown 81 arrives 20 years late, but in a way the film is just in time to remind us how much pop music has changed and how much better it could be. Showing at 7 p.m. Friday, Saturday and Sunday at ...

A collection of two announcements, one press-release nd one Japanese promotional book for the Basquiat movie Downtown 81 (published circa 2001).

Basquiat’s Art Career Took Off in Part Thanks to an Indie Film“All of the books that talk about Annina Nosei giving Jean-Michel his first studio, that wasn’t actually true.” ...