From the Exhibition: 40 Top Art Events of the Downtown Era: A Timeline, 1974–1992

New York Film Festival Downtown, Tessa Hughes-Freeland & Ela Troyano, Featuring Nick Zedd and Nan Goldin, Poster, 1985 & 1986

Programs for Second Annual (one folded sheet, 10 1/2″ x 15 3/4″) and Third Annual (one folded sheet, 11 1/2″ x 16 1/2″) New York Film Festival Downtown.

As film and video equipment became cheaper and more accessible, more and more artists tried their hands at independent cinema. Hughes-Freeland and Troyano, with the support of local newspaper the East Village Eye and local nightclub 8 B.C., created a new venue for these experimental films. Work by Nan Goldin, Nick Zedd, Jacob Burckhardt, James Nares, and many others exemplified the medium’s deepening intersections with art, performance, literature, and music.

“The New York Film Festival Downtown was created last year to break the stranglehold of ignorance and intolerance that has confined most of these films to the clubs and performance spaces of downtown New York.”

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From the Exhibition: 40 Top Art Events of the Downtown Era: A Timeline, 1974–1992