CAPTURED | WEST COAST PREMIER
30 Years of the Lower East Side New York City 1979-2009
Documentary by Daniel B. Levin, Ben Solomon, and Jenner Furst
New York 2008 | 85 min
ALIFE | Space 1520 N. Cahuenga Blvd. Suite 2 | Los Angeles | CA 90028 | Juky 9, 2009
POSTER
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INFORMATION
“Little Brother is watching Big Brother” — Clayton Patterson.
ALIFE PRESENTS is proud to host the West Coast Premiere of CAPTURED, A film by Ben solomon, Dan Levin, Jenner Furst and Executive Producer Marc Levin; depicting New York’s Lower East Side recent history and Clayton Patterson own journey as its devoted record-keeper.
Since 1979 Clayton Patterson has dedicated his life to documenting the final era of raw creativity and lawlessness in New York City’s Lower East Side, a neighborhood famed for art, music and revolutionary minds. Traversing the outside edge he’s recorded a dark and colorful society, from drag, hardcore, heroin, homelessness, political chaos and ultimately gentrification. His odyssey from voyeur to provocateur reveals that it can take losing everything you love to find your own significance.
Born in 1948, Patterson and his companion, Elsa Rensaa, moved from Calgary Canada to New York City in 1979. Since 1983 they have lived in the building they purchased on Essex Street. An ardent community advocate, Patterson also co-founded the New York Tattoo Society and helped win the fight to legalize tattooing in the City. Patterson and Rensaa are also known for their custom embroidered baseball caps.
The New York Times describes Patterson’s endeavor: “He has amassed a huge day-by-day visual history of the area, told mainly through unpretentious portraits of its myriad and diverse faces: tenement kids and homeless people, poets and politicians, drug dealers and drag queens, rabbis and santeros, beat cops, graffiti taggers, hookers, junkies, punks, anarchists, mystics and crackpots.”
CAPTURED was produced and directed by New York City born and raised Ben Solomon and Dan Levin. Solomon, an Eighties’s child with a poet father and photographer mother, grew up surrounded and inspired by the arts and the streets of New York City. Levin comes from a family tradition of filmmakers, he is a 3rd generation director on his father’s side. In 2001, while still seniors in high school Solomon and Levin collaborated on their first film LA CIUDAD DEL HIP HOP. After graduating from Emerson College in 2005 with BA’s in film, they formed BENvsDAN Productions and immediately began working on CAPTURED. http://www.capturedmovie.com
ALIFE will host the outdoors screening in SPACE 15 Twenty’s courtyard, adjacent to it’s Hollywood flagship. The screening will be accompanied by an in-store installation of Patterson’s photographs and memorabilia as well as a commemorative packaged set that will include the CAPTURED DVD, a Patterson signed photographic print and a limited-run T-shirt. Also for sale are Patterson’s two books, “Front door”, published by OHWOW and “Wildstyle”, published by Unique Publishing.
Relevant links
CAPTURED: http://www.capturedmovie.com | http://capturedles.com/
OHWOW: http://www.oh-wow.com/
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ABOUT: Alife is a Lower East Side, New York-based creative workshop and downtown-lifestyle retailer founded in 1999. Alife is recognized as a worldwide leader in design and promotion of innovative high-quality, culturally-relevant products and projects. Alife has produced numerous collaborative projects with artists and brand partners. Alife has flagship locations in New York, Los Angeles, Vancouver and Tokyo. Alife Presents is a gallery space where chosen artists and select brands alike are invited to create and showcase ideas. Via Alife Presents, the Alifecreative team curates and produces art exhibits, product collaborations and conceptual retail installations.
