Portrait of the artist on the mean streets

Never mind the narrative, just feel the rhythms. Next week, Downtown 81 will be screened in Dublin as part of Temple Bar's Diversions programme. The story of a day in the life of a young artist wandering the streets of downtown New York trying to sell a painting to raise money to pay his rent, it's not so much Downtown 81's narrative content as its thematic context which should pique your interest.

Starring the then-unknown Jean-Michel Basquiat as the artist hawking his wares on a well-worn circuit from bar to gallery opening, Downtown 81 is a snapshot of a New York on the make which has now completely disappeared from view. In the 1980s, before Rudy Giuliani took his sweeping-brush and decided to turn it into New Disney, New York was one hell of a town. It was a place where such now relatively gentrified downtown areas as Alphabet City and SoHo were places where estate agents feared to tread and where Ronald Reagan's promise of a new dawn for America just didn't quite ring true.

Naturally, as with any gritty, grimy urban space where there are more derelict buildings than upmarket coffee shops, you found artists who wanted to express themselves on film, on canvas or on tape. It's these young men and women in a hurry who are the real stars of Downtown 81. Downtown was their playground, and what they produced was worth experiencing again and again.

As a quasi-documentary of the creativity to be found amongst the chaos, and the sparks which fly when talent meets talent, the film is a winner, especially when it comes to the music. Besides Basquiat's own musical ambitions - there's music in the film from his band Gray, an outfit which also featured Vincent Gallo in its ranks - Downtown 81 paints broad, pulsating brushstrokes of what was happening on that particular punk-funk, no-wave-of-new-wave scene.

James White & The Blacks, Melle Mel, Walter Steding, Tuxedomoon and even Kid Creole & The Coconuts (signed back then to the Ze label) pop up at various points to propel the film in another direction. Indeed, many of these artists also appear on Brian Eno's No New York compilation, his snapshot of a vibrant scene in a state of creative flux.

In time, such musical adventures would lead to the current second-wave-of-new-

wave New York-based acts such as The Rapture, !!! and DFA.

Back then, however, in the short few years after punk and before hip-hop went global, it was all about making it up as you went along. You can hear the formative roots of what was to come, as musicians such as DNA's Arto Lindsay began to shuffle various sonic shapes to come up with something entirely new and unexpected.

What's also apparent from Downtown 81 is the rich co-dependence between artists of every hue which energised this particular scene. Basquiat the painter, graffiti artist, poet and musician may have crossed more boundaries than most, but such multi-tasking was seen as something to be encouraged and applauded.

While many scenes can be introverted, unchallenging, self-serving and lacking ambition, these downtown kids wanted to push boundaries and break new ground every day and night of the week. That they did and a film like Downtown 81 exists to show the plotting and pitching involved is something to be celebrated. Indeed the very fact that Downtown 81 has even made it to the screen, after spending 20 years in limbo because of missing materials, is to be applauded.

There is, of course, an irony about how a film about a thriving arts scene in a chaotic, rundown, anarchic city-centre area is being shown in the shiny, sanitised surrounds of Dublin's art-cum-tourist quarter, but that's one we'll leave for a day when our post-modern facilities are in proper working order. Just cross your fingers that it won't be raining next Tuesday and head downtown to see how some scenes can be good for your artistic health.

Downtown 81 will be screened at Meeting House Square, Temple Bar, Dublin next Tuesday at 10.30pm. Admission is free but tickets must be obtained in advance from the Temple Bar Information Centre