Amos Poe and No Wave Cinema
When a loosely defined guerrilla art movement called No Wave coalesced in the gutted Lower East Side of the late 1970s and ’80s, Amos Poe, arguably the first punk filmmaker, was immediately identified as one of its leading lights. In the aftermath of his death on Christmas Day, 2025, this collection showcases Poe’s electric, grungily glamorous work, both behind the camera and in front of it. Made in collaboration with a who’s who of downtown icons, including Debbie Harry, John Lurie, and Cookie Mueller, these are passion-over-polish films born of a vanished NYC—one of Max’s Kansas City and the Mudd Club, of cheap rents, crumbling brick, fatalistic attitudes cribbed from Nouvelle Vague films, and gnawing urban anomie, set to some the hippest music ever recorded in these United States.
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Unmade Beds
Directed by Amos Poe | 70 mins | 1976
Jean-Paul Belmondo’s character in "Breathless" (1960) thought he was Humphrey Bogart; Duncan Hannah’s character in this proto-No Wave work—a restless poseur slash photographer named Rico—thinks he’s Jean-Paul Belmondo. Released the same year as Poe’s "Blank G... -
The Foreigner
Directed by Amos Poe | 92 mins | 1978
Described by its director as an “anti-homage,” Poe’s noir-inflected tale follows a French secret agent (Eric Mitchell), arrived in NYC on a mission whose exact nature is unclear, and targeted by enemies whose grudges are equally ambiguous. Shot with a mere $5... -
Subway Riders
Directed by Amos Poe | 113 mins | 1981
A Pied Piper is terrorizing the city, luring victims with the sound of his saxophone blowing before blowing them away. A mood-drenched memento from Fun City NYC—invested with pungent ambience by future "Sugarbaby" DP Johanna Heer—"Subway Riders" stars Poe hi... -
Variety
Directed by Bette Gordon | 100 mins | 1983
A young woman lands a job as a cashier at a downtown porno theater, and soon finds herself inexorably drawn towards what’s happening onscreen—as well as other troubling fantasies. One of the great independent films of the ’80s, featuring a who’s who of t... -
Downtown 81
Directed by Edo Bertoglio | 72 mins | 2000
In 1980, writer and Warhol associate Glenn O’Brien, Swiss photographer Edo Bertoglio, and Jean-Michel Basquiat, a graffiti innovator and noise music artist who’d just begun to exhibit his paintings, hit the streets of lower Manhattan to make a movie abou...
