Courtney Harmel & Tom RubnitzSparkling and Wild: ’80s New York in Film

Courtney Harmel was a key player in New York’s video scene in the mid-1980s. Her work captures the performance culture and nightclub events of downtown New York: from Keith Haring’s legendary “Party of Life” birthday celebrations in the Paradise Garage to signing sessions for Andy Warhol’s “Interview” magazine, along with video productions created for the display windows of the iconic Fiorucci store. Harmel also filmed the spontaneous improvisations for the movie and stage show “Andy & Edie” (1984), in which Warhol and his superstar protégée Edie Sedgwick are played by the performance artists Joey Arias and Ann Magnuson—both were part of the Club 57 network surrounding Haring as a young artist.

The works by the film and video artist Tom Rubnitz present the downtown scene in all its facets with quirky humor and psychedelic colors: videos such as “Made for TV” (1984) play with the look of television programs and bear witness to the celebration and parody of mass media and pop culture. Backstage shots at the Pyramid Club and documentaries about East Village characters such as the cabaret star John Sex reflect a glittering and wild queer community of the time. Also on display is Rubnitz’s “Wigstock: The Movie” (1987), the first documentary film about the Wigstock Festival, which was a key antecedent for the introduction of drag performance into the mainstream. Rubnitz’s promotional film for the “Summer of Love” project was created in 1990 for the Foundation for AIDS Research, uniting many figures from the scene under an “Art Against AIDS” banner. It commemorates the numerous losses (Rubnitz himself died from an AIDS-related illness in 1992) and also signals the activism and commitment that prevailed in art, for which Haring also stood.