John Lurie

An intimate, behind-the-scenes look at how an anonymous chef became a world-renowned cultural icon. This unflinching look at Anthony Bourdain reverberates with his presence, in his own voice and in the way he indelibly impacted the world around him.

In the years before Ronald Reagan took office, Manhattan was in ruins. But true art has never come from comfort, and it was precisely those dire circumstances that inspired artists like Jim Jarmusch, Lizzy Borden, and Amos Poe to produce some of their best works. Taking their cues from punk rock and new wave music, these young maverick filmmakers confronted viewers with a stark reality that stood in powerful contrast to the escapist product being churned out by Hollywood.

The film is a day in the life of a young artist, Jean-Michel Basquiat, who needs to raise money to reclaim the apartment from which he has been evicted. He wanders the downtown streets carrying a painting he hopes to sell, encountering friends, whose lives (and performances) we peek into.

From 1978 to 1982, Glenn O'Brien hosted a New York city public access cable TV show called TV Party. Co-hosted by Chris Stein, from Blondie, and directed by filmmaker Amos Poe, the hour long show took television where it had never gone before: to the edge of civility and "sub-realism" as Glenn would put it. Walter Steding and his TV Party "Orchestra" provided a musical accompaniment to the madness at hand, and many artists and musicians, from The Clash, Nile Rodgers, Jean-Michel Basquiat, David Bryne and Arto Lindsey were regular guests. It was the cocktail party that could be a political party. With 80 hours of disintegrating 3/4 inch videotape as a starting point, we tracked down the trend setting participants still living today and found out what they remember of the period and how the show influenced their lives. This, combined with clips from the orginal show, became the documentary "TV Party.

At loose ends drifter stumbles upon a struggling painter as he searches for answers under the stars and rooftops of New York.

"5 Sides of a Coin" is a comprehensive overview of the worldwide cultural movement of Hip-Hop.

the connections and energy flow between the various artists populating the 1980s sub-cultures of New York and Berlin. Features Jim Jarmusch, Lydia Lunch, Blixa Bargeld, Alex Hacke, Gudrun Gut, Nick Cave, and others. An important film. Bravo, Mr. Dreher.

A short behind-the-scenes documentary shot and edited on Super 8 by filmmaker Tom Jarmusch, director Jim Jarmusch’s brother, during the filming of STRANGER THAN PARADISE.

Face Addict tells the story of a unique and unrepeatable experience, that of the artistic community in New York between the late '70s and early '80s, known as the downtown scene.

A short film narrated by John Lurie comprised of still images La Jetee-style about the middle-aged rediscovering punk rock.

Young lovers Sailor and Lula hit the road to start a new life together away from the wrath of Lula’s deranged, disapproving mother, who has hired a team of hitmen to cut the lovers’ surreal honeymoon short.

A wacky group of locals visit the neighborhood cigar shop, looking for good times and finding plenty of hilarious fun. But when the greedy owner threatens to close the shop for good and turn it into a trendy vegetarian restaurant, the neighborhood proves they'll do just about anything to save their favorite hangout.

A corporate raider and his henchman use a chanteuse to lure a scientific genius away from his employer and family.

Six million dollars suddenly goes up for grabs when an aged diner's heart fails after he discovers that he has won the lottery. Which of the remaining late-night dining regulars will get the cash? How many will have to die to get the answer?

"Lounge Lizard" John Lurie — actor, performer, and musician — talks about love and life and gives a gentle insight into modern time's hipster attitudes.

John Lurie and the Lounge Lizards performing live in Berlin.

A man wanders out of the desert not knowing who he is. His brother finds him, and helps to pull his memory back of the life he led before he walked out on his family and disappeared four years earlier.

Jesus, a humble Judean carpenter beginning to see that he is the son of God, is drawn into revolutionary action against the Roman occupiers by Judas -- despite his protestations that love, not violence, is the path to salvation. The burden of being the savior of mankind torments Jesus throughout his life, leading him to doubt.

Father Maurice, a priest living in a residential college for priests in Rome, is called out one day to "exorcise" the devil from someone. The devil turns out to be in the form of a fun-loving man called Giuditta. What Father Maurice doesn't know is that this type of devil will turn his life around.

A bored New Jersey suburban housewife's fascination with a free-spirited woman she has read about in the personal columns leads to her being mistaken for the woman herself and into a chaotic adventure of amnesia and self-discovery.

A disc jockey, a pimp and an Italian tourist escape from jail in New Orleans.

New York layabout Willie forms an unexpected bond with his young Hungarian cousin Eva when she pays him a surprise visit. Later, Eva moves in with their aunt in Cleveland, and Willie takes his best friend Eddie to see her—a visit that culminates in a strange, eventful trip to Florida.

In downtown Manhattan, twentysomething Allie, whose father is not around and whose mother is institutionalized, is a big Charlie Parker fan. He almost subconsciously searches for meaning in his life and meets some idiosyncratic characters along the way.

A psychotic saxophone player lures victims to deserted spots with his music and then guns them down.

Video diary shot by Martin Scorsese during the making of his 1988 film, The Last Temptation of Christ.

30-minute short subject film that would become Stranger Than Paradise. This short was released as a standalone film in 1982, and shown as "Stranger Than Paradise" at the 1983 International Film Festival Rotterdam. When it was later expanded into a three-act feature, that name was appropriated for the feature itself, and the initial segment was renamed "The New World".

The Sunset Blvd. of underground cinema, and a suitably ambivalent retrospect on the star-game casualties of New York's upper depths, with Patti Astor statuesquely hysterical as a 20-year-old Norma Desmond, made up to recall Edie Sedgwick and surrounded by Warhol's lost children. We've been here before, but without the hindsight: a camera cruise along a hustler's meat-rack, kitchen-talk over cold canned spaghetti, Taylor Mead grimacing in a spastic dance, the silent stud a sullenly passive observer. Mitchell's ear for campy native wit and eye for figures in a loft-scape happily keep at bay the otherwise contagious NY ennui.

Nan Goldin's slide show “The Ballad of Sexual Dependency” converted, mixed and screened as a film by the artist, portraying the American underground culture, the no wave scene, post-Stonewall gay subculture, among others.

The Offenders is a raucous punk satire of the teenager-leaves-home genre. As in the detached and aloof manner of Andy Warhol's underground films, it tells an amusingly deadpan story centred on the kidnapping of a young woman named Laura and her abusive, controlling father. An out-of-control gang of punk hoodlums flesh out the cast.

Two Moon July was a multidisciplinary event that featured experimental video, film, visual art, performance and music in a theatrical framework. More than thirty artists participated in the program, which was produced for the Kitchen by Carlota Schoolman and directed by Tom Bowes.

Documentary on American film director Jim Jarmusch made for German television. featuring interviews with cast and crew from 𝘚𝘵𝘳𝘢𝘯𝘨𝘦𝘳 𝘛𝘩𝘢𝘯 𝘗𝘢𝘳𝘢𝘥𝘪𝘴𝘦 and 𝘗𝘦𝘳𝘮𝘢𝘯𝘦𝘯𝘵 𝘝𝘢𝘤𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯.

Second feature film by the French-born director is a Bertolucci-style story of a bored, rich woman looking for romance and adventure. She meets an American G.I., dumps him, then falls for a Communist worker.

New Cinema cofounder Becky Johnston recently described this little-seen feature as “an East Village reinvention of the Otto Preminger movie *Laura*” that plays “fast and loose with the noir detective genre.”

Nares mocks up Ancient Rome by shooting in faux-classical sites including Tribeca's American Thread Building, where a decrepit penthouse loft with a peeling-paint dome serves as an echoey stand-in for the imperial palace. The latter location required ingenuity: Posing as potential renters, Nares and associates asked the manager to show them the apartment, then unlocked the windows on the way out; a few hours later, they broke back into the space, full cast and crew in tow, to shoot the necessary scenes.

A “sci-fi povera” film shot on Super 8, Men in Orbit features musician Lurie and Eric Mitchell as chain-smoking astronauts in a decrepit New York living room that has been transformed into a spacecraft.