Lauren Carol Smith In exactly an hour, at 6:15 p.m., The BMW Guggenheim Lab will kick off its film programming with a screening of Blank City. The Local talked with Paul Dallas, the project’s film curator, to see what’s in store for the neighborhood.
How does Blank City reflect the history of the neighborhood?
The film is really a document of the “No Wave” and “Cinema of Transgression” arts scene that happened in the East Village and Lower East Side in the late 1970s and early 1980s. It was the time when people were squatting in buildings, before the real-estate boom of the eighties, and the moment when artists could live in close proximity and foster this anti-establishment sort of art scene. It shows what was happening in music and art at the time through rich moments that have had an effect on artists and filmmakers since.
