Pierre-Paul Puljiz
The life and work of New York artist Jean-Michel Basquiat have been marked by a long quest for identity, by his Haitian and Puerto Rican family origins and by a founding trip to Africa. To portray this major painter of the 20th century, who died in 1988 at only 27 years old, is also to evoke the place of black American artists in the conservative and racist America of the Reagan years.
From Brooklyn to the Bronx, Soho to Greenwich, Union Square to Wall Street... Join us and the friends, collaborators and gallery owners who supported Jean-Michel Basquiat throughout his life. The first ever recognized graffiti artist, who saw international success as a neo-expressionist painter in the 80s, Basquiat is a true contemporary hero who died at the peak of his career.
New York Conversations is a documentary made of varied conversations revolving around cinema in New York. These conversations give us the opportunity to sketch some of the bad boys and girls -directors, actors or producers of New York cinema, whether they be famous, anonymous or blossoming talents. Young and impetuous for most, they are watched over by a few veterans. All share this iron will to remain independent, out of choice but above all, out of necessity. The necessity to create at any cost. Shot with a Super8 camera, this documentary groups together 15 short conversations about film making, life, independence, art and...New York.
Joe Dallesandro embodies a certain form of American dream, thanks to his career launched by Andy Warhol, fascinated by his ephebe body. Revealed by Paul Morrissey in the trilogy "Flesh" (1968), "Trash" (1970) and "Heat" (1972), he established himself as an icon of underground cinema thanks to stripped roles, becoming the liberator of the male nudity in Cinema. The one who inspired the song "Walk on the Wild Side" to Lou Reed is now in his sixties, happy manager of a property close to Hollywood Boulevard. In his courtyard, seated on a low wall, he evokes with amusement and nostalgia his youth and his various collaborations with Warhol, Morrissey, Coppola, Waters, Breillat or Rivette.
The story of Le Palace, the famous parisian night club in the late seventies. The documentary is a conversation between ex-clients, founders and workers of the place. Owned by Fabrice Emaer, this nightclub became in 1978 the center of the french social life.
