Patti Astor
Biography: Patti Astor (born ca. 1950) is an American performer who was a key actress in New York City underground films of the 1970s, and the East Village art scene of the 1980s, and involved in the early popularizing of hip hop. She co-founded the instrumental contemporary art gallery, Fun Gallery. Patti Astor grew up in Cincinnati, Ohio where she was a charter member of the Cincinnati Civic Ballet. Her adventurous spirit however took her to New York City at the age of eighteen (in 1968) to Barnard College but she soon dropped out to take a leadership role in the anti-Vietnam war group SDS (Students for a Democratic Society). She spent two and a half years as a young revolutionary. At the end of that war she traveled the United States and Europe with her dance act, A Diamond As Big As The Ritz. Returning to New York in 1975 Astor was in the midst of the storm in New York's legendary East Village, from punk rock at CBGB's, the new wave at the Mudd Club and independent films such as Underground U.S.A. (1980) with directors such as Jim Jarmusch and Eric Mitchell. In 1978, she married Steven Kramer, and artist and a keyboardist for a band called the Contortions. Astor had studied acting at the Lee Strasberg Institute. A queen of the downtown scene, she appeared in over a dozen experimental and low-budget films. Her entry into this genre was Amos Poe's underground "Unmade Beds" (1976), a black and white 16mm remake of Godard's Breathless which she acted in alongside filmmaker Eric Mitchell, Blondie singer Debbie Harry, and artist Duncan Hannah. She also appeared in such low-budget and low-audience films as Rome '78, The Long Island Four, and Snakewoman. Perhaps the best remembered of these was Eric Mitchell's Underground U.S.A (1980), which she starred in alongside poet Rene Ricard, but none of these films were commercially successful. Her best known roles was as Virginia, the roving reporter, in Charles Ahearn's legendary hip-hop epic, Wild Style. Virginia in Wild Style is a blonde bombshell who encounters the rap and graffiti culture uptown, and introduces it to the downtown art world, a role Patti went on to perform in real life. These films are in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum, and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. (Wild Style was voted "one of the ten best rock and roll movies of all time".) ... Source: Article "Patti Astor" from Wikipedia in English, licensed under CC-BY-SA 3.0.
Place of Birth: Not available
Birthday: January 01, 1950
Deathday: N/A
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Known For
Wild Style
1982-08-01
Wild Style
Overview: Legendary New York graffiti artist Lee Quinones plays the part of Zoro, the city's hottest and most elusive graffiti writer. The actual story of the movie concerns the tension between Zoro's passion for his art and his personal life, particularly his strained relationship with fellow artist Rose.
Genres: Drama Music
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1982-08-01
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The Foreigner
1978-01-01
The Foreigner
Overview: A French special op suffers an existential crisis as he wanders New York City in search of a mission and the requisite connections.
Genres: Thriller Drama
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1978-01-01
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Bachelorette Pad
1983-01-01
Bachelorette Pad
Overview: Barbie dolls come to life in an underground experimental film
Genres: No genres available
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1983-01-01
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Underground U.S.A.
1980-11-06
Underground U.S.A.
Overview: The Sunset Blvd. of underground cinema, and a suitably ambivalent retrospect on the star-game casualties of New York's upper depths, with Patti Astor statuesquely hysterical as a 20-year-old Norma Desmond, made up to recall Edie Sedgwick and surrounded by Warhol's lost children. We've been here before, but without the hindsight: a camera cruise along a hustler's meat-rack, kitchen-talk over cold canned spaghetti, Taylor Mead grimacing in a spastic dance, the silent stud a sullenly passive observer. Mitchell's ear for campy native wit and eye for figures in a loft-scape happily keep at bay the otherwise contagious NY ennui.
Genres: Drama
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1980-11-06
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Rome '78
1978-12-23
Rome '78
Overview: Nares mocks up Ancient Rome by shooting in faux-classical sites like Grant's Tomb and Tribeca's American Thread Building, where a decrepit penthouse loft with a peeling-paint dome serves as an echoey stand-in for the imperial palace. The latter location required ingenuity: Posing as potential renters, Nares and associates asked the manager to show them the apartment, then unlocked the windows on the way out; a few hours later, they broke back into the space, full cast and crew in tow, to shoot the necessary scenes.
Genres: History Drama
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1978-12-23
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Red Italy
1979-03-13
Red Italy
Overview: Second feature film by the French-born director is a Bertolucci-style story of a bored, rich woman looking for romance and adventure. She meets an American G.I., dumps him, then falls for a Communist worker.
Genres: No genres available
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1979-03-13
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Assault of the Killer Bimbos
1988-05-06
Assault of the Killer Bimbos
Overview: Two go-go dancers, Lulu and Peaches, are framed for the murder of their employer by the real killer, sleazy gangster Vinnie. Picking up waitress Darlene along the way, the three are involved in wild car chases with cops as they head south to cross the border into Mexico, where they unexpectedly encounter Vinnie in a fleabag Mexican motel.
Genres: Action Comedy Crime
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1988-05-06
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Unmade Beds
1976-01-01
Unmade Beds
Overview: Sketched loosely, the narrative of Poe's first feature is as scrappy and paper-thin as its protagonist Rico, a self-styled loner in New York City circa 1976 who longs to inhabit the "New Wave" scene of mid-60s Paris. In Rico's day-to-day life as an unsuccessful photographer, he wearily searches for authentic connection-- even as he spouts the most inauthentic prose imaginable.
Genres: Drama Comedy Crime
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1976-01-01
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Only You
1981-01-01
Only You
Overview: In this ostensible murder mystery, the genre elements are merely a pretext for the series of haunting (if inconclusive and only mildly erotic) homo-social encounters he stages. Starting with the familiar premise of the absent woman, so popular with Downtown filmmakers, Vogl drains his storytelling of any hints of noir stylization. Instead of nighttime scenes, slick streets, and dark alleys, he shoots documentary-style on the nondescript, sunlit streets of Brooklyn, Manhattan, and City Island in a manner that casually references the art-film angst of Michelangelo Antonioni.
Genres: No genres available
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1981-01-01
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Blank City
2011-04-06
Blank City
Overview: In the years before Ronald Reagan took office, Manhattan was in ruins. But true art has never come from comfort, and it was precisely those dire circumstances that inspired artists like Jim Jarmusch, Lizzy Borden, and Amos Poe to produce some of their best works. Taking their cues from punk rock and new wave music, these young maverick filmmakers confronted viewers with a stark reality that stood in powerful contrast to the escapist product being churned out by Hollywood.
Genres: Documentary
Original Language: en
Release Date: 2011-04-06
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The Long Island Four
1980-12-23
The Long Island Four
Overview: Based on the true story of four Nazi saboteurs who infiltrated the US in 1942 and were quickly caught and executed, this 80-minute ode to America's irresistibly corruptive allure was the only underground feature by writer-director Anders Grafstrom. A Swedish art director who relocated to NYC, he created this grandiose No-Wave, Super-8 color-epic at the age of 23, only to die in a Mexican car accident a few months after completing the film.
Genres: Drama
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1980-12-23
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Forever, Lulu
1986-11-13
Forever, Lulu
Overview: When Elaine, an adventurous young woman from Germany, arrives in New York City, she sets out to be a famous writer. After a brief stint at a mundane job, Elaine falls on hard times and also becomes intrigued by a mysterious stranger named Lulu. Before long, Elaine gets roped into situations involving theft, murder and the mob. Can the beleaguered expatriate with big dreams turn her life around and steer clear of crime and chaos?
Genres: Comedy Crime Drama
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1986-11-13
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Kidnapped
1978-01-01
Kidnapped
Overview: Eric Mitchell's debut film, shot in Super 8, stars Mitchell, Anya Phillips, Patti Astor, and Duncan Smith among a crowd of hip "poseurs," talking sex, manners, and politics.
Genres: Drama
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1978-01-01
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Snakewoman
1977-01-01
Snakewoman
Overview: Stars Patti Astor as a waylaid heroine fending for herself in the wild, filmed guerilla style in Central Park.
Genres: No genres available
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1977-01-01
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Make Me Famous
2023-02-17
Make Me Famous
Overview: An investigation of Edward Brezinski, an ambitious, charismatic Lower East Side painter hell-bent on sucess, who thwarted his own career with antics that roiled NYC’s art elite. Brezinski’s quest for fame gives an intimate portrait of the art world’s attitude towards success and failure, fame and fortune, notoriety and erasure.
Genres: Documentary
Original Language: en
Release Date: 2023-02-17
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