Boom for Real: The Late Teenage Years of Jean-Michel Basquiat

Sara Driver explores the pre-fame years of the celebrated American artist Jean-Michel Basquiat, and how New York City, its people, and tectonically shifting arts culture of the late 1970s and '80s shaped his vision. Conveying Basquiat’s personal magnetism, eccentricity and non-stop creativity without romanticizing him, Driver worked collaboratively with her friends and other artists who emerged from that scene, such as Nan Goldin, Jim Jarmusch and Luc Sante, whose thoughts, period film footage, music, images, and anecdotes of their friend help visually tell the story of Jean-Michel’s downtown NYC.

Duration: 79
Production year: 2017
Country: United States of America

Sara Driver

Sara Driver is an independent director who was part of the creative wave in downtown Manhattan from the late 70’s to the 90’s. Driver rose in the cinema world when she produced two of Jim Jarmusch’s films, Permanent Vacation and Stranger Than Paradise, in which she also starred.

In 1981 she directed her first film, You Are Not I, based on a short story by Paul Bowles, which earned plenty of praise and was considered one of the best films of the 80s by the Cahiers du Cinéma. A fire in a warehouse destroyed the negatives and the film was thought to be lost for several years, but later a copy was found in Bowles’ archives.

She directed two other feature films, Sleepwalk (1986) and When Pigs Fly (1993), which were screened and received awards at several film festivals. Albeit not extensive, her work has been praised by important film critics and it was screened at LEFFEST in 2015.

Original title: Boom for Real: The Late Teenage Years of Jean-Michel Basquiat

Sara Driver

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