Down & Dirty: American D.I.Y. Restored
Variety (1983) c/o Other Parties

Down & Dirty: American D.I.Y. Restored

Cinema Rediscovered 2023

Season

Please note : this season finished in July 2023

The punk and ‘no wave’ movements of the late 70s cut a noisy if brief swathe through the pretensions of the increasingly corporatised contemporary music scene. Emerging from the physical and cultural decay of downtown NYC, the punk scene combined an aggressive rejection of canonical and popular taste with an enthusiastic D.I.Y. approach – producing works that defied categorisation, defiled the audience and despised convention. This fuelled a renewed energy in both East and West coast underground scenes, spurring a rush of low-budget filmmaking, loaded with irony-rich critique.

This strand of restorations explores the impact of this oppositional ethos and lo-fi aesthetic on a new generation of American filmmakers in the following decades, with a selection of films which explored controversial subjects, countered mainstream representations and offered other, more radical ways of seeing gender, sexuality and race on screen.

This strand is curated by Watershed Cinema Assistant Steph Read.

Following its launch at Cinema Rediscovered, this strand will be touring to venues across the UK and Ireland.


Previous screenings in this season

UK Premiere: Salvation!

classified 15 Down & Dirty: American D.I.Y. Restored
UK Premiere: Salvation! Have you said
Please note: This was screened in July 2023
Film

The devoutly anarchic comic satire on religion, greed and consumerism in 1980s America.

UK Premiere: Variety

classified 18 Down & Dirty: American D.I.Y. Restored
UK Premiere: Variety
Please note: This was screened in July 2023
Film

Female voyeurism and desire collide together in the centre of a seedy early ‘80s New York.

Drylongso

classified 15 Down & Dirty: American D.I.Y. Restored
Drylongso
Please note: This was screened in July 2023
Film

This rediscovered gem of American DIY filmmaking is an elegiac tribute to Black female originality.

Kamikaze Hearts

classified 18 Down & Dirty: American D.I.Y. Restored
Kamikaze Hearts
Please note: This was screened in July 2023
Film

Juliet Bashore’s queer docufiction stars Tigr Mennett and real-life porn star girlfriend Sharon Mitchell celebrates the heady days of the San Francisco underground in the 1980s.

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