No Wave Cinema / Photo Credit: Tony Frankels - Stage and Cinema
WHAT IS NO WAVE CINEMA? (In the
Entertainment industry.)
What is No Wave Cinema?
Born out of the grit and grime of New York City circa
1976, No Wave music and film was the tongue-in-cheek response to the rising
popularity of 'New Wave,' Punk's arty half-sibling. Rooted in the Lower East
Side and East Village, 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, boredom and confusion. No Wave was
more a product of its time than a 'movement,' but out of the chaos rose a
number of filmmakers and musicians who have become icons of the indie world and
inspired countless others
The No Wave Cinema was an underground
filmmaking movement that flourished on the Lower East Side of New York City
from about 1976 to 1985. Sponsored by and associated with the artists group
Collaborative Projects or "Collab", no wave cinema was a stripped-down
style of guerrilla filmmaking that emphasized mood and texture above other
concerns -- similar to the parallel no wave music movement.
This brief movement, also known as
New Cinema (after a short-lived screening room on St. Mark’s Place run by
several filmmakers on the scene), had a significant impact on underground film.
No wave cinema spawned the Cinema of Transgression (Scott B and Beth B, Richard
Kern, Nick Zedd, Tessa Hughes-Freeland and others) and a new generation of
independent filmmaking in New York (Jim Jarmusch, Tom DiCillo, Steve Buscemi,
and Vincent Gallo).
Other filmmakers associated with the
movement included Charlie Ahearn, Manuel DeLanda, Vivienne Dick, Eric Mitchell,
James Nares, Amos Poe, Susan Seidelman and Casandra Stark Mele.
In 1978, Nares released a well-known
no wave Super 8 film titled Rome 78, his only venture into feature-length,
plot-driven film. Despite its large cast in period costumes, the work was not
intended as a serious undertaking, as the actors interject self-conscious
laughter into scenes and deliver seemingly improvised lines with over-the-top
bravado. The film features no wave cinema regular Lydia Lunch along with
Mitchell, James Chance, John Lurie, Judy Rifka, Jim Sutcliffe, Lance Loud,
Mitch Corber, Patti Astor, artist David McDermott of McDermott & McGough,
and Kristian Hoffman, among others.
Coleen Fitzgibbon and Alan W. Moore
created an 11:41-minute film in 1978 (finished in 2009) of a no wave concert to
benefit Colab called "X Magazine Benefit”, documenting performances of
DNA, James Chance and the Contortions, and Boris Policeband in NYC in the late
1970s. Shot in black and white Super 8 and edited on video, the film captures
the gritty look and sound of the music scene during that era. In 2013 it was
exhibited at Salon 94, an art gallery in New York City.
In 2010, French filmmaker Céline
Danhier created a documentary film titled Blank City. The film presents an oral
history of the no wave cinema and Cinema of Transgression movements through
interviews with Jarmusch, Kern, Buscemi, Poe, Seidelman, Ahearn, Zedd, John
Waters, Blondie’s Debbie Harry, hip-hop legend Fab 5 Freddy, Thurston Moore of
Sonic Youth, and Jack Sargeant. The soundtrack includes music by Patti Smith,
Television, Richard Hell & The Voidoids, James Chance and the Contortions,
Bush Tetras and Sonic Youth.
In 2011, the Museum of Arts and
Design celebrated the movement with the retrospective "No Wave
Cinema", which included works by Jarmusch, Kern, Mitchell, Poe, Zedd, Scot
and Beth B., Lizzie Borden, Edo Bertoglio and Kembra Pfahler.
Like the later Dogme 95 creative
movement, No Wave Cinema has been described as a defining period in low budget
film production.
References & Credits: Google, Wikipedia, Wikihow, WikiBooks,
Pinterest, IMDB, Linked In, Indie Wire, Film Making Stuff, Hiive, History
Channel, Film Daily, New York Film Academy, The Balance, Careers Hub, The
Numbers, Film Maker, TV Guide Magazine, Blurb, Media Match, Quora, Creative
Skill Set, Chron, Investopedia, Variety, No Film School, WGA, BBC, Daily
Variety, The Film Agency, Best Sample Resume, How Stuff Works, Studio Binder, Career
Trend, Producer's Code of Credits, Truity, Production Hub, Producers Guild of
America, Film Connection, Variety, Wolf Crow, Get In Media, Production Beast, Sony
Pictures, Warner Bros, UCAS, Frankenbite, Realty 101, Careers Hub, Screen Play Scripts,
Elements of Cinema, Script Doctor, ASCAP, Film Independent, Any Possibility, CTLsites,
NYFA, Future Learn, VOM Productions, Mad Studios, Rewire, DP School, Film
Reference, DGA, IATSE, ASC, MPAA, HFPA, MPSE, CDG, AFI, Box Office Mojo, Rotten
Tomatoes, Indie Film Hustle, The Numbers, Netflix, Vimeo, Instagram, Pinterest,
Metacritic, Hulu, Reddit, NATO, Mental Floss, Slate, Locations Hub, Film
Industry Statistics, Guinness World Records, The Audiopedia, IndiePix,
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No Wave Cinema / Photo Credit: Tony Frankels - Stage and Cinema
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