Acme Screening Room to Screen “Make Me Famous” Documentary



(LAMBERTVILLE, NJ) — Acme Screening Room will present a screening of the 80s art documentary Make Me Famous on Saturday, September 9, 2023 at 5:00pm. The film documents the Punk DIY artist scene that burst out of NYC’s East Village in the 1980s. Following the screening there will be a discussion with filmmaker Brian Vincent, producer Heather Spore and cinematographer John Sawyer.

Arguably the last great art explosion in our generation, that seminal art scene gave us art stars Jean Michel Basquiat, Keith Haring and Richard Hambleton, but also gave us a community of artists where the likes of Madonna and The Talking Heads performed for each other on a nightly basis and filmmakers Amos Poe and Eric Mitchell rallied their punk artist friends to make a movie.

Make Me Famous is a madcap romp through the 1980’s NYC art scene amid the colorful career of painter, Edward Brezinski, hell-bent on making it. What begins as an investigation into Brezinski’s legacy and mysterious disappearance becomes a sharp, witty portrait of NYC’s 1980s downtown art scene resulting in an irresistible snapshot of an unknown artist that captures the spirit of an iconic era.

Tickets are $15 and available for purchase online. The Acme Screening Room is located at 25 South Union Street in Lambertville, New Jersey.

The documentary is a deep dive into the history of NYC’s Downtown art scene through the lens of a striving artist. It is an unusual vantage point of the incredibly popular East Village art scene.  Most surveys of that era focus on the art stars, but this film brings the stars to the background and showcases an intimate look of what drove the artists and what they were up against. Featuring never-before-published archival footage along with over 600 images of art and photos from the era immerses the viewer in the reality of what it was like to be a struggling artist in arguably the last great art explosion in our generation. The East Village art world grew from small store fronts to a glamorous, international scene, with many of its artists becoming famous, and commanding big prices for their work. This is a look at the community of artists through the lens of one of the archetypical striving artists, Edward Brezinski.

The Acme Screening Room is a non-profit weekly independent and documentary film series founded by Friends of Lambertville Library in 2008 in partnership with the Lambertville Free Public Library and the City of Lambertville in the City’s “Justice Center,” formerly the ACME Supermarket.

The series regularly features guest speakers (authors, directors, activists), post-film discussion programs and/or exhibitions held in conjunction with a film. Our programs bring the world of film to life for our audience members and create a space to thoughtfully reflect on films by artists at all levels: from local filmmakers to nationally recognized professionals.

Films are screened using a state-of-the-art digital projection and surround sound system. The ACME Screening Room is a 501c3 nonprofit entity.