In the mid-1970s, Amos Poe was one of the shining lights of the downtown art scene. Inspired by the new bands at CBGB, and the improvisational techniques of French New Wave cinema, Poe showed that you did not need a large budget — or any budget at all — to create…
Rarely screened today, The Foreigner lives on primarily through the excellent on-set photographs taken by Fernando Natalici to publicize the film. Gallery 98 has a number of vintage resin-coated prints made from the original negatives by Natalici in the early 1990s when The Foreigner was first released as a VHS video. All prints are signed and annotated by Natalici.
If one wanted to encapsulate with a single work the spirit of the downtown art scene in the late 1970s, an appropriate choice might be Beth B & Scott B’s independent film The Offenders. A “savage satire” full of violence and nihilism, this low budget Super 8 film embodies the period’s…