No Wave Cinema and The Cinema of Transgression

by Drew Martin
I guess I sort of wanted to watch the Oscars but realized I can get a recap in five minutes on my commute tomorrow morning so I spent some time tonight digging a little deeper into the world of movies by watching Blank City, a documentary about No Wave movies, and the Cinema of Transgression. These New York-based independent film movements focused on narrative films, and politically radical interrogations of the subject matter that were about "getting the hell out of the artworld and finding a kind of cinema closer to reality." Two elements noted that lead to the beginning of the end of these movements were the financial success of Jean-Michel Basquiat, which flipped which side of money it meant to be cool, and MTV because of where that steered the entertainment industry.