“It felt like our lives were movies.” - singer Debbie Harry

A meticulously observed document of New York underground film in the late 70s and early 80s, Blank City zeros in on the No Wave and Cinema of Transgression scenes that spawned a generation of filmmakers.

Before the Reagan era resolutely gentrified the lower end of Manhattan, a group of dispossessed twenty-somethings banded together to create their own world with handheld cameras. Luminaries like Jim Jarmusch, Amos Poe, Nick Zedd, John Waters and Steve Buscemi stitch together this particular Zeitgeist of DIY filmmaking with astute observations and frank anecdotes about the good old bad days.

'It's defined by what it isn't. What is it? I don't fuckin' know.' - artist Lydia Lunch on the No Wave movement