Downtown 81 (30th Anniversary Edition)

The desolate streets of Manhattan’s lower east side in the early 1980s were permeated with abandoned buildings, drug lords and vagabonds – but the underground scene was bubbling with an electrifying fusion of art and music. At the beginning of this newfound energy was Swiss photographer Edo Bertoglio, poised to capture the imaginative, fantastical drama, Downtown 81. The film, a documentary-style narrative, features then-obscure artists on the brink of fame, such as a nineteen-year-old Jean-Michel Basquiat, Debbie Harry, Fab Five Freddy and Lee Quinones.

Originally titled New York Beat Movie, Downtown 81, which took nearly 20 years to complete, is both a post-modernist fairytale and a vivid depiction of the downtown New York art and music scene in the early 1980s. For the first time, this indie cult-classic is available as a digitally restored collector’s edition.