Captured: A Film & Video History of the Lower East Side
Lower East Side film took off using the combat cameras developed during the Second World War, flourished along with the Beats and the New Wave, and culminated in the eighties art scene. The genre has its own pantheon, including the director Jack Smith, the film-supplier Rafic Azzouni, and the actors Rockets Redglare and Taylor Mead, Warhol's muse. Patterson has assembled an occasionally bewildering collection of essays by, and interviews with, artists who were there. Recurrent themes include slumlords, drugs, and improvisation: Smith "almost always had a script . . . but it just dissolved." Patterson has his own place in this history as the videographer of the Tompkins Square police riots, and at times one feels he has an axe to grind. One poignant moment is a plea to readers to help the aging Mead fight eviction.Copyright © 2005The New Yorker