Amos Poe wasn’t a filmmaker when he decided in the mid-‘70s that he wanted to start a cinematic movement. He was just a downtown artist who, like all downtown artists and misfits, congregated at CBGB for Blondie and Contortions shows, and ate at Mickey’s -- a restaurant by Washington Square Park where Julian Schnabel was the cook. “He was always breaking plates and Mickey was always getting mad at him,” recalls Poe.

“I didn’t know how to make a film,” Poe muses. “I just knew I wanted to take what was going on around me – what was going on musically – and make it visual. Make it black-and-white, and cheap. And if enough films were made, maybe we could make a difference.”  Today, Poe is considered the leading figure of No Wave Cinema, which spanned from 1976-85, and included Abel Ferrera, Nick Zedd, and Jim Jarmusch, who credits Poe’s 1977 film The Foreigner as the catalyst for his own filmmaking career. Some even regard him as the father of modern independent American cinema.

30 years later, Poe still writes films based on what’s going on around him. His latest, Pronto, currently in pre-production, focuses on the 2004 Madrid train bombings, which happened while he was there. In his fictionalized account, the terrorist is American, and everyone in the film (unbeknownst to them) is related. “We’re all related, but we’re all killing each other,” he explains.

Poe is also establishing another movement: Pianospecs, his year-old online project, could revolutionize the world of advertising. Born out of a “:30 Commercial Reel” NYU film course he teaches each spring in Florence (“I like Italy. Why not start another Renaissance in Florence?” was his thinking), the site displays an assortment of short, artful commercials -- or “specs” -- created by college-age kids using a video camera, G4 computer, and the editing program Pro Tools. Anyone can post a spec, and any company can lease one – as Air China and Converse have -- for $10,000 a year. Pianospecs also reps the spec-makers.  The idea is that big, glossy TV commercials are a dated concept. Indie-style specs -- intended for Web use, cell phones, and iPod downloads -- are where it’s at.  And if there’s anyone who knows hipster Zeitgeist, it’d be Poe.

~Karin Nelson

Check It Out:

To watch, submit, or lease a spec, pianospecs.com

Get The Foreigner, $5, amazon.com

Flim clip from The Foreigner, courtesy of Amos Poe.
Nutella spec by Gillian Berrow.