Reviews of Davis’s new documentary Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child (discussed previously) keep coming in, including a very positive assessment in a roundup of the Sundance film festival in the New York Times. It notes that, based on her own footage, “Ms. Davis creates a vivid if somewhat rough-edged portrait of an artist who was also a friend. Her familiarity with Basquiat, his struggles as a black artist working in an overwhelmingly, at times hostile white world…and especially her sense of the downtown New York scene from which Basquiat emerged in the late 1970s give the movie a vibrant pulse.” (“Don’t Smirk, Sundance’s Roots Do Show,” Manohla Dargis, New York Times, January 28, 2010 http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/29/movies/29sundance.html) Links to other reviews, and an interview with the director, are below: “Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child: Director Tamra Davis Paints a Portrait of the Artist,” Lorraine Cwelich. Wall Street Journal, 19 January 2010. http://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2010/01/19/jean-michel-basquiat-the-radiant-child-director-tamra-davis-paints-devastating-portrait/tab/article/ Cwelich says the film may be both hotly anticipated and an actual breakout film. She quotes director Davis as saying “I saw anger in him but I also saw this whole other side of him, very intelligent, funny, filled with life, smiles, dances and super-flirty, super-charming,” said Davis. “That was the person who, I felt, people were getting it wrong.” The Hollywood Reporter said the “lively and touching doc combines insider view of its art-star subject with smart present-day interviews.” (“Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child -- Film Review,” John DeFore, 29 January, 2010. http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/film-reviews/jean-michel-basquiat-the-radiant-child-film-1004063662.story). This article notes that the film mostly avoids the artist’s early life. The film needed the Estate’s permission to include the many images of his work, and “in return for his cooperation, Davis promised Basquiat's father she'd leave the family out of it.” This would be a notable omission, as Basquiat told Davis in the original interview that he ran away from home as a teenager after “I was smoking pot in my room and my father came in and he stabbed me in the ass with a knife.” Others later noticed a scar. “I thought I better go before he killed me, you know.” “Review: The Radiant Child,” Ben Fulton, The Salt Lake City Tribune, January 25, 2010. http://blogs.sltrib.com/sundance/index.php?p=10042&more=1&c=1&tb=1&pb=1 Four Stars. “All in all, Radiant Child is a necessary film about an artist who never stopped throwing all the right curve balls. “ Tamara
Davis on the film, and Basquiat. |