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.

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