"BASQUIAT"

Event Description

Lenfest's 35 Anniversary Season

Lenfest Outreach & Engagement Film Series

Janus Films/The Criterion Collection presents "BASQUIAT"

Directed by Julian Schnabel

Tuesday, September 15, 2026 at 7 p.m.

Stackhouse Theater/W&L Elrod Commons

No tickets required.

A FREE SHOWING FOR OUR PATRONS.

108 minutes, no interval.

Julian Schnabel's tribute to his friend and fellow painter Jean-Michel Basquiat is less a conventional biopic than an impressionistic, sensory immersion into the much-mythologized downtown-Manhattan art world of the 1980s. Jeffrey Wright, in his first lead film role, stars as the visionary artist whose rise from graffiti tagger to art star forces him to confront the glare of sudden fame, along with racism, his own struggles with addiction, and the difficulties of being self-determining and free in America. Bolstered by an ensemble cast that includes a sublime performance by David Bowie channeling Andy Warhol, Schnabel's directorial debut-presented here in the filmmaker's own luminous black-and-white remastering-is a profoundly expressive elegy for a radiant life cut short.

Starring Jeffrey Wright, Michael Wincott, Benicio Del Toro, Claire Forlani, David Bowie, Dennis Hopper, Gary Oldman, Christopher Walken, Willem Dafoe, Jean-Claude La Marre, Parker Posey, Elina Löwensohn, Paul Bartel, Courtney Love, Tatum O'Neal, Chuck Pfeiffer, Rockets Redglare, Michael Chow, David McDermott, Sam Rockwell.

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