By Chlotrudis Independent Film Society
Rating: 3.5 cats
Director: Malia Scharf | Max Basch
Country: brazil, united_states
Year: 2021
Running time: 77
IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt11720064/reference
Cheryl says: “This documentary is a love letter written and directed by Scharf’s daughter and as such, while thoroughly documenting the artist’s life and work, it rarely goes below the surface to show any of his flaws or critics who dismissed his work. It features lots of talking head artists, curators, and collectors, including Yoko Ono, KAWS, and Dennis Hopper, but it’s the archival footage of the downtown New York punk rock and street art scene that is most compelling and saves the film. I loved the footage of Club 57, later just known as the Church, where I saw Annie Sprinkle perform in the 1980s and the later footage of the Cosmic Cavern in Brooklyn. Kenny Scharf is the one who got away, surviving drugs and the aids crisis to outlive his idol Andy Warhol and his contemporaries, most notably Keith Haring, with whom he was very close, and Jean-Michel Basquiat, part of the trio who is portrayed as more of a rival than a friend. If you never heard of Scharf, it may because he did in fact survive, leaving New York in the 1990s after losing so many friends to the aids crisis and struggling to make ends meet, and moving to Miami with his young family. He later returns to Los Angeles where he was born and is still working today. The only glimpse of regret comes when his wife says maybe he should have stayed in New York and pushed through that low period, when the scene had ended and his work no longer seemed relevant. Another moment that revealed a bit more than the catalog bio was when he talked about Haring’s death from aids and his last moments with him, and at the end of the film when he describes his own sexuality as fluid, we get the sense that there might be more here to explore. It made me think of my friend George Condo, who left Boston in the 1980s to join the same scene, is also still working today, and whose work is now being newly discovered. Overall, the film provides a comprehensive review of the scope of work by an important American artist, without a lot of nuance, but it does succeed in capturing a moment in time with tons of great film and video clips that transport the viewer back to the party. A few false endings make it a bit too long at 80 minutes. 3.5 cats
“Screened at the Provincetown International Film Festival“