Captured

New York’s Lower East Side has been a fountain of creativity and art since the early 1950s, a free-wheeling bazaar of ideas and artists that has challenged and shaped mainstream culture. Captured tells the story of film and video in the Lower East Side and the East Village in the artists’ own words. Over 100 contributors discuss the early years with Allen Ginsburg, Andy Warhol, Jack Smith, Taylor Mead and Jonas Mekas, as well as the wild 1970s and 1980s with Jim Jarmusch, Steve Buscemi, Luis Guzman, Nick Zedd and many others. Movements such as No Wave and the Cinema of Transgression are covered, as is the story of Pull My Daisy, considered among the true progenitors of “indie film.”

Captured is part formal history and part inspirational text, reminding people on the outside looking in how often their contributions form the invisible pillars of American art and popular life long after they themselves are forgotten. To quote the great pop art filmmaker Jack Smith, “Art school? Art school? I didn’t have the luxury of going to art school. I had to come to New York and go straight to work making art.”

This book is a must-have for fans of independent film and students of cinema everywhere.

Canadian-born Clayton Patterson is a photographer, artist, outlaw historian and community activist. He lives and works on the Lower East Side of New York City.