Basquiat: Black and White Version: Members Only
The Frida Cinema's seating is first-come, first-serve. For our Midnight Screenings, please plan on arriving by 11:30pm to ensure ample time for parking, picking up concessions, and securing optimal seats. Screening will begin promptly at midnight.
Director: Julian Schnabel Run Time: 107 min. Release Year: 1996
Starring: Benicio del Toro, Claire Forlani, David Bowie, Jeffrey Wright, Michael Wincott
Frida Cinema Film Club members are in for a treat with an exclusive two day run of Basquiat: Black And White Version.
No painter electrified the 1980s art scene like Jean-Michel Basquiat, a New York street kid whose visionary blending of expressionism, pop art, and the radical new aesthetics of hip-hop and graffiti propelled him to international fame before a tragic early demise. Julian Schnabel’s stunning debut charts Basquiat’s dizzying rise and fall with an insider’s eye for authentic details of the downtown arts demimonde as well as a fellow postmodernist’s interest in the dream-like and surreal.
Jeffrey Wright’s brilliant introductory performance provides trenchant insight into the artist’s creative passions and personal demons. Cemented by David Bowie as a spot-on Andy Warhol, Basquiat’s supporting cast is a murderers’ row of Hollywood legends and art lovers (Dennis Hopper, Gary Oldman, Benicio del Toro, Parker Posey, Christopher Walken, Willem Dafoe) lending their talents to one of the high points of 90s independent cinema, an intimate elegy for a once-in-a-generation artistic phenomenon.