According To The variety Amos Poe, the New York underground filmmaker who chronicled the punk scene and directed films including “The Blank Generation” and “Alphabet City,” died Thursday of cancer. He was 76.
His wife Claudia Summers posted on his Instagram account on Dec. 25, “Amos took his last breath today at 3:33 pm, surrounded by loved ones. ‘Adios’ — AP.”
Friends including Kim Gordon and Jim Jarmusch paid tribute on his Instagram, with Jarmusch writing “love you so very much.”
Born in Tel Aviv, Poe got started with the short music film “Night Lunch” with Roxy Music and David Bowie. The 1976 documentary “The Blank Generation” was his second film, co-directed with guitarist Ivan Kral, and was one of the first to chronicle the burgeoning punk rock movement in New York. Filmed partly at CBGB, it featured appearances from Patti Smith, Talking Heads, Television, Richard Hell and Wayne County.
But Kral took control of “Blank Generation” and several of Poe’s other films after a disagreement, reediting them and removing Poe’s name.
“I’m trying to be grown up about it. But they’re trying to rewrite history,” Poe told the New York Times when he discovered what had happened.
As the No Wave music movement was getting started in the city, he pioneered the concept of No Wave filmmaking, directing films such as “The Foreigner” with Debbie Harry and “Subway Riders” with Susan Tyrell, Robbie Coltrane and Cookie Mueller.
“Our whole esthetic, or the way we approached it, was that you didn’t necessarily have to have the professionalism or the understanding of making films, you had to have the inspiration and the will to put yourself completely into it,” Poe told Reuters in 2011.
Poe also directed music videos for acts including Anthrax and Run-DMC, as well as the public access TV show “TV Party,” hosted by Blondie’s Chris Stein and Glenn O’Brien.
His other films include Steve Earle documentary “Just an American Boy,” “Triple Bogey on a Par Five Hole” with Philip Seymour Hoffman and 2012’s “A Walk in the Park.
