Lech Kowalski

Born to Lose: The Last Rock and Roll Movie

Veteran documentary filmmaker and hipster Lech Kowalski creates this film about his friend and hard-partying rock god Johnny Thunders, member of legendary proto-punk band the New York Dolls. Through archive footage and interviews with such musicians as Dee Dee Ramone and Sylvain Sylvain, the film details his stint with the Dolls, the formation of his other band, the Heartbreakers; his rise to fame, particularly in Japan; his descent into heroin addiction, and the mysterious circumstances of his death.

Rock Soup

It's the summer of 1989 in New York's Lower East Side. Homeless people have turned Tompkins Square Park into a tent city. On a nearby corner lot deeper in Alphabet City, where punk became famous and Allen Ginsburg wrote much of his poetry, a bunch of people try to make a soup kitchen work. They scrounge their food supplies from restaurants, fish markets and dumpsters. They build fires in the dirt and cook on old sewer grates. However the authorities threaten to close down the soup kitchen. The impeccably constructed black and white images give a view of the pre Disneyfication of New York City in this amazing work from filmmaker Lech Kowalski.

Story of a Junkie

Filmed in documentary-style, the film follows the character of Gringo, a young man looking for fortune in New York, only to fall into heroin addiction.