“Welcome to Mondo New York. Home of outcasts, misfits, losers, perverts, lunatics, gangsters, pranksters, outlaws, neurotics, psychotics, maniacs, brainiacs, hippies, yippes, yuppies, junkies, flunkies, monkeys, all trying to claw their way to the top of trash heap, all screaming me, me, me,” Lydia Lunch says to the camera in the opening of 1988 cult classic documentary Mondo New York. “I want my fame, my fortune, my lousy 15 minutes, my what the fuck whatever it is – You want it, we got it! It’s Mondo New York.”
Directed by Harvey Nikolai Keith, Mondo New York is a look at New York’s vibrant, defiantly weird ’80s downtown avant-garde/performance-art subculture, from No Wave to performance art, including Joey Arias, Rick Aviles, Ann Magnuson, Charlie Barnett, Joe Coleman, Phoebe Legere, Karen Finley, Veronica Vera, Frank Moore, and more. The film was produced by Stuart S. Shapiro, who created cult late night TV series Night Flight, and now Night Flight Films and the MVD Rewind Collection are giving it a new Collector’s Edition Blu-ray that is out December 12.
“After years of Night Flight being my censored center of the Cult Universe, I felt it was important to take off all the creative leashes of Cable TV, and film the real underbelly of Art in New York City,” says Shapiro of the film and this new Collector’s Edition set. “Mondo New York is that time capsule of the Performance Art World of Mutant Creativity Unabashed and Uncensored.”
This is Mondo New York‘s first-ever DVD release (let alone Blu-ray) and it features a restored print and remastered soundtrack. The Collector’s Edition Blu-ray also comes with a soundtrack CD, an 18-page booklet, a mini-poster, and a bunch of bonus features, including new interviews and more. You can watch the trailer, and read more from Shapiro, below.
There will also be a 35th Anniversary screening of Mondo New York at Roxy Cinema on December 5 at 9:30 PM and Stuart Shapiro will be on hand for a Q&A afterwards. Tickets are on sale.
“Thirty-five years have passed since I embarked on this wild cinematic journey capturing the artistic underbelly of New York City – a celebration of the unique characters and raw energy that defined a unique era of the 1980’s.
This Collector’s Edition of the Mondo New York features a new transfer from the original negative and an enhanced soundtrack. It is a tribute to the audacious spirit of New York City and the vibrant subcultures that called it home.
After years of Night Flight being my censored center of the Cult Universe, I felt it was important to take off all the creative leashes of Cable TV, and film the real underbelly of Art in New York City. Mondo New York is that time capsule of the Performance Art World of Mutant Creativity Unabashed and Uncensored.
As you journey through Mondo New York, prepare to be immersed in a timeless world of underground performance art, where the ordinary dissolves into the extraordinary, capturing a moment in time when artists, misfits, and visionaries converged to create a landscape of boundless creativity and unapologetic self-expression and push the artistic expression of what is Art as far as possible.”
