Downtown 81 (2000)

Downtown 81: Directed by Edo Bertoglio. With Jean Michel Basquiat, Richard Weigand, Cyndy Schneidau, Millie Schneidau. After being released from the hospital, the artist Jean Michel Basquiat wanders around Manhattan trying to sell art to make money and find a place to stay.

“Hello there, The fact that this movie came out after 20 years is due to some kind of miracle : business problems prevented post-production to be completed in 81 and then part of the footage of the film was lost in Europe. It took about 16 years to find it again. It contributed to building the legend of some underground artists like Tuxedomoon who, in 1981, kind of counted partly on that movie to make them famous, as they well deserved, on the East coast. In 2000, when the film came out at the Cannes festival, it contributed to put them back together after about ten years of solely concentrating on their solo career, being now dispersed all over the world (Mexico, New York, Athens, Brussels), as the footage of this film once was…”