At the matinée

At the Matinee provides an account, through Walter Schreifels and his music, of a world that existed in New York’s Lower East Side during the 80s and has since disappeared.

Through the memories of Walter Schreifels and his music, AT THE MATINEE tells the unique story of New York’s Lower East Side in the late 1980s — a place and time that became synonymous with hardcore music, counter culture and defiant youth. Thirty years later, Schreifels continues to write and perform music that takes inspiration from his original hardcore roots in the Lower East Side. As such, he will be our on-screen guide to the neighborhood and the musicians who shaped it, helping us journey back in time to the pavements outside of CBGBs where every Sunday afternoon hardcore kids, skinheads, and punks lined the street waiting for one of the now infamous matinee concerts of the late 1980s. Through Schreifels’ unique first person lens, we will meet a motley cast of characters who were also there and influential in the scene, painting an unmatched portrait of that time and how it still influences their creative lives to this day. AT THE MATINEE will also take us to Germany (Berlin) and Italy (Bologna), places that are important to Schreifels’ life as a musician, to examine how hardcore and its legacy has had a footprint in other parts of the world to this day.