Lower East Side on the Screen-Evolving Urban Identity

“The feature length, short and documentary films that will play at the series aim at reflecting the neighborhood’s history and development, so that it doesn’t become only a faint echo in the collective unconscious.”

Philip Hartman, No Picnic, 1985. Video still. Courtesy of the Angel Orensanz Foundation.

Lower East Side on the Screen-Evolving Urban Identity
The Angel Orensanz Foundation and The Film-Makers’ Cooperative

The Film-Makers’ Cooperative, created in 1961, is the largest archive and distributor of independent and avant-garde films in the world. MM Serra and Anne Hanavan—curators in charge from The Film-Maker’s Coop—together with Javier Moreno and Marta Arenal from the Angel Orensanz Foundation, have put together an audacious, noteworthy film program with titles culled from the extensive Film-Makers’ Coop archive collection.

Lower East Side On The Screen—Evolving Urban Identity intends to showcase independent, underground films spanning the decades from the 1970’s to the 1990’s that touch upon the subject of the urban fabric of the Lower East Side and the Downtown counter-culture scene.

A far-reaching neighborhood—its area expanding from the so-called East Village to Chinatown and Bowery—the LES urban configuration and specific identity has experienced a continual evolution and re-shaping up to the current days.

The feature length, short and documentary films that will play at the series, aim at reflecting the neighborhood’s history and development, so that it doesn’t become merely a faint echo in the collective unconscious. Cinematographic material is thus empowered the ability to shed light on the past and provide the present with a sense of memory, further highlighting the link between urban configuration, the city’s residents and the related cultural manifestations and expressions that have emerged during the decades.

We are thrilled to host and work on this series program, offering our public the opportunity to rediscover filmmakers and artists that hail from different generations, usually associated with the past cultural golden age of Downtown New York. Together, through audiovisual storytelling, we will explore and reconsider unconventional ways of looking at the city, its buildings and people’s lives.

We will proudly kick off the series screening Philip Hartman’s “No Picnic” (1985). A grainy 16mm, black-and-white documentary in the purest 1980’s indie cinema style, “No Picnic” was originally filmed in 1985, but not released until 1987, the year it was honored at Sundance Festival. The film delves into the dramatic change undergone by the East Village. It will give viewers a snapshot of the different lifestyles and the beginning of gentrification in the neighborhood during the mid 1980’s. Intelligently shot on location in the streets, it shows the gutted buildings and decrepit clubs that shaped the East Village at that time, when the punk rock scene had reached a legendary summit that was about to fade away.

“No Picnic” is the story of a failed musician, Macabee Cohen (played by David Brisbin) who earns his living restocking the supplies in the neighborhood’s cigarettes machines and jukeboxes, while on a quest to find his dream woman. Gentrification is distressingly and increasingly apparent all around this would be hero. An intriguing character with a mix of hipster and nerd, he stoically carries on with a non-stopping, ironic interior monologue.

The documentary has a time capsule cast featuring Luis Guzman, Richard Hell, and then-unknown Steve Buscemi. It also boasts a notable soundtrack including the likes of The Raunch Hands, Lenny Kaye, Charles Mingus and Fela Kuti, among others.

We are pleased to present this collaborative cinematic project, conceived and curated by two nonprofit organizations. The LES On the Screen—Evolving Urban Identity screening series will take place at the Angel Orensanz Foundation, kicking off in September 13 and taking place once a month through November 2011.

Up-coming Screening Dates:

October 3, 2011
November 7, 2011

7:30 PM.
Angel Orensanz Foundation
172 Norfolk Street, New York, NY 10002.

The LOWER EAST SIDE ON THE SCREEN-Evolving Urban Identity Film Series is made possible, in part, with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts, and the New York Department of Cultural Affairs.