A special screening of Susan Seidelman’s Smithereens was presented on the last night of the Queens World Film Festival. I’d never seen it before, but I knew of its reputation as one of the earliest films directed by a woman to get international attention.

In spite of its being shot in 16 millimeter, by a total unknown who’d never made a feature before, it was immediately chosen for the Cannes Film Festival in 1982. As she mentioned in the Q and A after the screening, she was totally unprepared for the recognition. But, I think wisely, she turned down a number of scripts before choosing her next project, Desperately Seeking Susan which, aside from launching Madonna’s screen career, showed that she could handle the greater scrutiny and interference that comes with studio backing, in this case from Orion Pictures.

On a technical level, a comparison of the two films is almost laughable. Smithereeens, shot on a micro budget with often borrowed equipment and an amateur crew, is barely watchable. Or listenable, since the sound recording is pretty raw, although it seems tonally right for the screeching punk and metal songs that punctuate the action. But the first film seems gutsier and more original. It captures a certain moment in the history of New York – the early 1980’s – when the culture seemed to absorb a dizzying number of trends from young people who came here from all over the country, and all with the same ambition: to become famous.

I won’t summarize the story here. Suffice it to say that its heroine, Wren, is a sexy young woman from New Jersey who spends her time prowling the downtown scene in the hope of being “discovered”. But as what? I’m not sure she even knows. She puts a picture of herself (left) on car windshields, but it doesn’t say how to reach her. She mentions starting a band a few times, but she has no musical talent. She just likes to dance to punk music and hook up with the guys who play it. But since she has no job or regular source of income, she eventually just uses them to have a place to flop.

She has no shame of any kind. Susan Berman’s riveting performance is gloriously free of self-examination. After she dumps the most hopelessly smitten of her victims, Paul, he tells her she seems to have no feelings whenever she hurts people. In response, she just shrugs. “Well, see you around,” she says.

Wren is nothing if not consistent. She’ll show up anywhere to mooch no matter how many times she’s thrown out. “Look,” she says in effect, “I got to steal from you last time, so what’s the problem with me coming back? A girl has needs, you know.”

But the real revelation for me is the city itself. And I don’t think that anyone who is too young or unfamiliar with the city can understand this. There was a time when New York was a laboratory for everything that would eventually dominate the culture: in film, fashion, theatre, literature, art, journalism, I mean all of it. Young people came here to interact with thousands of others like themselves, but with the expectation that they would someday develop into professional artists in their field.

But they learned, soon enough, that they just might have to live like rats to get to that goal. Still, there was an unseen subsidy. There was a small but solid core of top money guys, and a few politicians, who knew that there must be living space for that culture; that it was fragile, that it might vanish in a moment. So they tried to make sure that those future artists who were willing to struggle would get that space.  And they did this in any number of ways, not just with rent laws that kept some apartments affordable. While floundering desperate losers like Wren came in droves, the city also drew the real talent that would be “discovered” here. People like Susan Seidelman.

But the New York City of today, when the air we breathe is going co-op, has turned its back on those kids for good, and they know it.

So where will they go now? The kind of cultural dominance that New York once had can only thrive in the sweet residues resulting from dynasties of corruption. Not Portland. Not Austin. Forget Boston. Face it, America is over. Look to Mumbai, or Lagos or Shanghai. But wherever it is, the youth of tomorrow will know they have to get there, no matter what, if they ever want to be discovered as an artist.

In fact, you can expect that a remake of Smithereens will be made there. But it probably won’t be in the English language.