New York City has seen its share of artistic revolutions, though any kind of positive revolution might have seemed impossible in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The city was crippled by massive debt with no help from the federal government, and whole neighbourhoods were urban war zones as countless buildings were left abandoned or left to decay. Those who dared reside in areas such as the Lower East Side took their life into their hands just leaving their apartments. But out of this came the No Wave film movement, documented in Celine Danhier’s Blank City, an exploration of the films and filmmakers who managed to create a cultural revolution, one Super 8 film at a time. Artists such as Jim Jarmusch, Beth B, Debbie Harry, John Lurie, Amos Poe and Susan Seidelman share their stories of strange and exciting years of poverty and creativity, and how in many ways the poverty fueled that creativity. They shared equipment, skills, and worked on each others’ films, found venues to exhibit them, all the while living in cockroach-infested apartments for $200 a month (an incredible price for NYC). At this time, cities did not require films to pay for filming permits, so the directors shot anywhere, anytime, and worked around public and traffic issues. They found abandoned building to shoot in, scavenged for set pieces, or sometimes didn’t use any set pieces at all.
