Boom for Real
Dec. 3rd, 2018 05:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerThis last weekend I went to Bloomington to see a series of four of Sara Driver’s films, almost 100% because this fit with my project brief for the year, and also because any excuse to visit Bloomington is a good excuse (we went to a new bakery called Two Sticks - as in “two sticks of butter” - and I had one of the most sublime chocolate chip cookies I’ve ever experienced).
Sara Driver is an independent filmmaker, mainly active in the 1980s and 90s as part of the Downtown art movement in New York (I hadn’t even heard of it till the fellow introducing the film told us about it), but the series kicked off with a documentary film that Driver completed just last year: Boom for Real: The Late Teenage Years of Jean-Michel Basquiat.
And in fact this choice makes perfect sense for the beginning of this series, because this film is not only a documentary about Basquiat (although it is that) but also a sort of filmed memoir of the artistic scene in which Driver herself developed as a filmmaker. There’s an intimacy and affection to the film’s portrayal of this world that speaks to Driver’s inside connection to it - which is especially important in this case because New York in the late 70s and early 80s comes across even in this affectionate portrayal as pretty much a hellhole.
Blocks of empty buildings, trash blowing in the streets, graffiti everywhere (Driver interviews some of the graffiti artists; Basquiat himself got his start in graffiti), the deserted streets so quiet that the sound of a single jukebox drifted for blocks - as long as it wasn’t drowned out by gunfire.
It was a place of crime and chaos and despair and yet also great creative ferment; the milieu explains something, perhaps, about Basquiat, and certainly something about Sara Driver’s work. Aside from this documentary, which is fascinating, I had quite a mixed reaction to her films, but I feel that I understand them better for knowing something about the environment in which they grew. Maybe you just had to be there to really get it.
Sara Driver is an independent filmmaker, mainly active in the 1980s and 90s as part of the Downtown art movement in New York (I hadn’t even heard of it till the fellow introducing the film told us about it), but the series kicked off with a documentary film that Driver completed just last year: Boom for Real: The Late Teenage Years of Jean-Michel Basquiat.
And in fact this choice makes perfect sense for the beginning of this series, because this film is not only a documentary about Basquiat (although it is that) but also a sort of filmed memoir of the artistic scene in which Driver herself developed as a filmmaker. There’s an intimacy and affection to the film’s portrayal of this world that speaks to Driver’s inside connection to it - which is especially important in this case because New York in the late 70s and early 80s comes across even in this affectionate portrayal as pretty much a hellhole.
Blocks of empty buildings, trash blowing in the streets, graffiti everywhere (Driver interviews some of the graffiti artists; Basquiat himself got his start in graffiti), the deserted streets so quiet that the sound of a single jukebox drifted for blocks - as long as it wasn’t drowned out by gunfire.
It was a place of crime and chaos and despair and yet also great creative ferment; the milieu explains something, perhaps, about Basquiat, and certainly something about Sara Driver’s work. Aside from this documentary, which is fascinating, I had quite a mixed reaction to her films, but I feel that I understand them better for knowing something about the environment in which they grew. Maybe you just had to be there to really get it.
no subject
Date: 2018-12-04 10:47 am (UTC)Will you be posting more about your mixed reaction in a separate post/individual posts for the various films?
no subject
Date: 2018-12-04 01:49 pm (UTC)