YouTube double bill: Downtown '81 (1981) and Chan is Missing (1982)

Heading into the new year, I thought I'd kick off 2026 in style with a look a quarter of a century back to a time in America where artists of every colour, creed, sexuality and level of fame seemed to mix freely in the big cities, swapping ideas and experimenting with the form of whatever they were doing. These are two films that in their own way, depict odysseys but don't worry, they're each around the 75-minute mark and we'll have a brief intermission between films.

Downtown '81 was the only cinematic output from famed and incredibly influentual artist Jean Michel Basquiat, though he starred in it rather than directing it (that was done by Swiss photographer and downtown New York mainstay Edo Bertoglio). He plays a struggling artist called Jean who walks around NY trying to sell his work and meeting a motley crew of local characters and seeing random bands. Who knows, maybe you'll recognise a couple. But either way, it could be the best depiction of the NY downtown scene put up on the cinema screen.

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EzGWSl7iO7Y

Chan is Missing was filmed around the same time and made a bigger splash, as the debut of Wayne Wang, who went on to bigger things later. It was the first movie by an Asian-American director to get a wide release and was groundbreaking in its form: made in San Francisco in black and white on a microbudget, switching between English, Cantonese and Mandarin (with subs, natch), it follows two Chinatown natives searching the area for the middleman in a deal they're trying to get done.

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OwS483iVZCg

As ever, we meet up at 7.45pm, press play together at eight and chat through a WhatsApp group. Link will go up together with movie links by 7.15pm. Don't be late, don't no show!