SAMO'S BACK Downtown 81 is a unique piece of film making starring the legendary artist Jean Michel Basquiat (1960 - 1988) just before he was embraced by the New York Art World. His short but prolific career leaped from graffiti scrawled on the walls of cutting edge clubs and Art galleries in SoHo to become the first African American artist to have one man shows all over the world. The film is a day in the life of a young artist who needs to raise money to reclaim the apartment from which he has been evicted. It has the homeless Basquiat wandering the streets and downtown clubs bumping into friends whose lives and performances we briefly peek into. Although not a documentary, Downtown 81 presents a slightly exaggerated, idealistic and mysterious version of the reality of the time. Downtown 81 fuses all the influential names and faces of the this innovative and fertile scene including, Debbie Harry, Kid Creole and the Coconuts, James White and the Blacks, the Plastics, DNA, Tuxedo Moon, Suicide, Melle Mel and Vincent Gallo, to name but a few. Newly discovered and re-mastered, Downtown 81 captures the New York moment when Punk, emerging Hip- Hop, graffiti, Art School Cool and East Village Art were at their creative best. Although Downtown 81 was selected for the Directors Fortnight at the 2000 Cannes Film Festival this is the first time that Downtown 81 will be widely available and it is an opportunity to see footage of this little documented era that was once thought lost forever. Released July 2001 
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