Philip Hartman’s priceless artifact of New York’s pre-gentrification East Village follows down-and-out jukebox operator Macabee Cohn, played with deadpan melancholy by David Brisbin, who wanders the cheap tenements, dive bars, and derelict streets of the East Village in search of a mysterious woman in a striped dress. 

NO PICNIC premiered at the 1986 Sundance Film Festival, where Peter Hutton won the Best Cinematography prize for his gorgeously evocative black-and-white imagery, working with producer Doris Kornish, Emmy Award–winning director Mike Spiller as assistant cameraman, animator Lewis Klahr as boom operator, Christine Vachon as assistant sound editor, with assistance from, among other notables, Jacob Burckhardt and Jeff Preiss. Scored by Ned Sublette, the soundtrack features The Raunch Hands, Fela Kuti, Charles Mingus and Student Teachers.

“The genuine article, a valentine to a neighborhood… a swan song to a languishing New York tribe.” – Manohla Dargis, Village Voice

“A forgotten eighties NYC movie is back, scuzzier and better than ever. No Picnic captures New York's boho hipster Lower East Side on the edge of Reagan-era gentrification— and a new restoration just saved it from obscurity.” – David Fear, Rolling Stone