Based around a rare interview she conducted with the artist himself, Tamra Davis creates a warm and interesting tribute to Basquiat in this entertaining doc. We follow him from Samo to gallery to Warhol to heroin. Girlfriends, dealers, and artists tell the stories Jean-Michel won’t in his enigmatic, one-line responses.

Davis had to comply with his father’s wishes that the family be left out of the film and so his past remains vague, strengthening the impression that he simply rose, fully-formed, from the city streets. Mostly the film is about Basquiat’s art – a colorful collage of his work, photos of the artist as a young man (who died young, at 27), and footage of the New York scene of the late seventies and early eighties of which he was, too briefly, king.

For more on the film visit Arthouse Films