To Go: A Conversation with Basquiat by Tamra Davis, Brooklyn

If I lived in New York, there's a 99.9 percent chance that tonight I'd go to BAMcinematek for A Conversation with Basquiat by Tamra Davis (part of the Brooklyn Academy of Music's Afro-Punk Festival, and paired with Afro-Punk by James Spooner and a compilation of Bad Brains shorts by Nicola Lazenberg). Centered around an interview conducted just before his death, the 21-minute documentary features some of the only known footage of the painter/graffiti artist/musician at work. It'd be so exciting to watch Jean-Michel as himself, rather than Julian Schnabel's vision of him in Basquiat (though Jeffrey Wright is so amazing) or the fucked-up-fairytale version of his life as seen in the Maripol-produced Downtown 81 (though that movie's crazy-fun, and we especially adore Debbie Harry as the bag lady princess).

Plus, we're just wild about Tamra Davis. She directed a bunch of my favorite videos ever, like "Bull in the Heather" and "100%" and "Dirty Boots" by Sonic Youth. Seeing Guncrazy's been on my things-to-do list for about 14 years, and I kind of even dug Crossroads. But my two most beloved Tamra-directed things are "Netty's Girl" (the Beastie Boys at their wonderful-wackiest, and it's shot down the street from my house! The moment from 2:09-2:13 is purely transcendent) and the documentary short No Alternative Girls. Featuring interviews with Courtney Love, a ski-mask-clad Kathleen Hanna, Kim Gordon, the ladies of Luscious Jackson, Yoshimi P-We from The Boredoms, Julie Cafritz from Pussy Galore, and Niki Eliot from Huggy Bear, the latter first came into my life on a Thurston Moore-hosted 1994 episode of 120 Minutes that guest-starred a very wee Beck and Tamra's husband Mike D. I taped the whole thing and replayed No Alternative Girls like 8 kajillion times, yet I still get goosebumps watching it today. Now you go:

A Conversation with Basquiat/Bad Brains Shorts/Afro-Punk screen tonight at 7 p.m. and July 3 at 4:30 p.m. at Brooklyn Academy of Music (30 Lafayette Avenue, Brooklyn).

Posted by Liz in Film
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