Amos Poe, “No Wave” Director Behind ‘The Blank Generation’ and ‘The Foreigner’ Dies at 76

Amos Poe, the director, screenwriter and pioneer of the “No Wave” movement of experimental, do-it-yourself filmmaking in New York City in the late 1970s and early ’80s, has died. He was 76.

Poe was diagnosed with stage 4 colon cancer in 2022 and died Thursday on Christmas Day, his wife, Claudia Summers, wrote on Instagram.

Poe helped document the punk explosion in downtown Manhattan with his most notable work, The Blank Generation (1976), made in collaboration with frequent collaborator Ivan Král. With footage shot in clubs including CBGB and Max’s Kansas City, the raw film captured the likes of such rising stars as Patti Smith, Blondie, The Ramones, Richard Hell’s Television, Talking Heads, David Johansen’s New York Dolls and The Shirts.

Influenced by the French New Wave, the Israel native also wrote and directed Unmade Beds (1976) and The Foreigner (1978), both featuring Blondie’s Debbie Harry; Subway Riders (1981); Alphabet City (1984); Triple Bogey on a Par Five Hole (1991); and A Walk in the Park (2012).

“Our whole aesthetic, or the way we approached it, was that you didn’t necessarily have to have the professionalism or the understanding of making films, you had to have the inspiration and the will to put yourself completely into it,” he told Reuters in a 2011 interview.

Poe directed music videos in the ’80s for Run-D.M.C., Anthrax and Van Zant and helmed Just an American Boy (2003), a documentary about musician-songwriter Steve Earle.

As The New York Times reported in 2020, Poe lost all ownership of The Blank Generation and several other films to Král in a lawsuit over licensing fees. “I’m trying to be grown up about it,” Poe said at the time. “But they’re trying to rewrite history.”

In addition to his wife, whom he married in 2019, survivors also include his daughter, Emily.