by Sara Driver, USA 2017, 78'
| PHOTOGRAPHY: Adam Benn | PRODUCER: Hells Kitten Productions, Faliro House, Le Pacte, Leopardo Filmes, Bunny Lake Films | |
| EDITING: Adam Kurnitz | LANGUAGE: English |
Jean-Michel Basquiat appeared on the New York downtown art scene in the late 1970s. He left his family’s Brooklyn home in 1975, at age 15, and led a vagabond life, finding refuge with friends and lovers. He repaid their hospitality by transforming domestic objects, from doors to refrigerators, into art. Sara Driver’s film focuses on this early period, showing the relationship between the then-nascent culture of graffiti, tags and drawings on the subway cars and the first works of the writer Basquiat who, under the pseudonym SAMO, wrote extravagant poems on walls. The links between the young conceptual tagger and the hip hop scene of the time are told, among others, by director Jim Jarmusch and rapper Fab Five Freddy who (with muralist Lee Quiñones and Al Diaz) helped make the SAMO tag famous before Basquiat claimed it as his own. Faithful to its title, the film excludes the artist’s childhood and family relationships, shows Basquiat as an almost alien entity who appeared out of nowhere on the Lower East Side, determined to have his say in every artistic field, from painting to music: he paints clothes for costume designer Patricia Field, forms an avant-garde band with Michael Holman (one of the screenwriters of Julian Schnabel's Basquiat) and parties with everyone at Mudd Club and Club 57. A figure destined to permanently change the city’s face and earn a place among the great American artists of the twentieth century.Sara Driver
adapted, produced and directed the film version of Paul Bowles’ short story, You Are Not I (1982). The film was lost for many years and then rediscovered among Paul Bowles’ belongings. It was awarded a restoration grant by the Women’s Film Preservation Fund via NYWFT and selected and shown in the Masterworks section of the New York Film Festival 2011. Her first feature film Sleepwalk (1986) won the prestigious Prix Georges Sadoul given by the French Cinémathèque. It was the opening night film for the 25th Anniversary of the Semaine de la Critique at Cannes and won the Special Prize at the Mannheim Film Festival. In 1993, her second feature When Pigs Fly
starring Marianne Faithfull and Alfred Molina premiered in competition at the Locarno Film Festival. Driver’s other film credits include producer in Jim Jarmusch’s Permanent Vacation, Stranger Than Paradise, Tom Waits music video It’s All Right With Me and co-producer of Uncle Howard by Aaron Brookner. Besides the film career, Driver also taught directing at New York University’s Graduate Film School (1996-1998).
starring Marianne Faithfull and Alfred Molina premiered in competition at the Locarno Film Festival. Driver’s other film credits include producer in Jim Jarmusch’s Permanent Vacation, Stranger Than Paradise, Tom Waits music video It’s All Right With Me and co-producer of Uncle Howard by Aaron Brookner. Besides the film career, Driver also taught directing at New York University’s Graduate Film School (1996-1998).