Living beside IMMA is about to bring its own little reward with a bulbous feast of film opening on Friday, September 15th. IMMA's No Wave cinema season promises to be an enthusiastic tour through the gritty world of New York bohemia in the late seventies and early eighties. No Wave was a cinematic vogue that zeroxed the DIY philosophy from its musical new wave contemporaries and applied them to film, leaving behind a series of textured mood laden films to instil the burgeoning American indie cinema movement with its identifiable aesthetic. No Wave was about more than just film, it summouned a terse rejection of commercial structurings and a ruthless rejections of easy aesthetic formulae for the intense experimentation that also characterised the insurgent American Indie scene.

Among the highlights I'm familar with in this film season is the 24 hour surreal biopic of Jean Michel Basquiat Underground 81, which follows the protaganist through the city as he litters it with doom laden scrawls on walls and along the way encounters a bag lady princess played by Debbie Harry. The Blank Generation is an archival document of the NY punk scene, featuring many its definitive bands and artists from Patti Smith, to the Ramones and Richard Hell. Just as lesser known acts proliferate the Basquiat movie with seminal sounds highlighting bohemia's cross fertilisation, the Blank Generation becomes an easy epithet for a scene of extraordinary drive and self creation with an equal dose of self destructive penchants and grandiose egos. I'll bring you reviews of the films as and when I get around to seeing them after an equal dose of coffee, cigeratte, trench coats and sunglasses.

The film festival runs from Friday 15 September through to Sunday 1 October, in the Lecture Room in IMMA. Download programme here and the listings here

Labels: Film, IMMA, Music, New Wave