As the title suggests, Downtown 81, originally called New York Beat, is more an artifact than a movie, an idealized slice of life in the artistically vibrant, yet-to-be-gentrified Lower East Side of 20 years ago. Half its 72-minute length consists of gigs in dingy, glittery clubs by such latter-day new-wave bands as Tuxedomoon, the Plastics, and DNA, and those alone make the film worth seeing. The other half, though, is a haunting, picaresque fairy tale featuring Jean Michel Basquiat, the graffiti-artist-turned-overnight-gallery-success whose meteoric career ended with his death in 1988, at the age of 27. Here he plays a graffiti artist named Jean, newly released from a hospital after a mystery malady, who floats through battered streets and studios pulsing with possibility. What little plot there is involves an elusive model named Beatrice (Anna Schroeder), some stolen music equipment, a fairy princess played by Debbie Harry, and cameos by marginal figures in the then bohemian scene shot by photographer Edo Bertoglio in lightweight Andy Warhol mode.

The revelation here, however, is the star. After Jeffrey Wright's simmering depiction of him in Julian Schnabel's Basquiat (1996), the artist himself comes off the screen as blithe, brilliant, and impossibly young. His premature death was a loss not only to the art world but to cinema. At the Cable Car.