The Foreigner
Amos Poe and No Wave Cinema
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1h 31m
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 $5,000 and largely improvised—including Cramps frontman Lux Interior’s pulling of a knife on Mitchell in a fight scene at CBGB’s—"The Foreigner" is a work of desolate beauty and creeping menace.
Up Next in Amos Poe and No Wave Cinema
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Subway Riders
Directed by Amos Poe | 113 mins | 1981
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Variety
Directed by Bette Gordon | 100 mins | 1983
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Downtown 81
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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...