At the age of 21, shortly before his meteoric rise through Manhattan's notoriously competitive art world, Jean Michel Basquiat was just another struggling New York hipster. In between scrawling his surreal, scratchy graffiti on walls and subways, Basquiat dabbled in music with his band Gray and made at least one foray into screen acting. But if that's a little-known fact, it's because the movie, though filmed, was never edited together.

Last year, the original team who put it together ­ director Edo Bertoglio, a renowned fashion photographer, scriptwriter Glenn O'Brien, a journalist on Andy Warhol's Interview magazine, and producer Maripol, a fashion designer, decided to go back to the reels and create the film Basquiat, who died of a heroin overdose at the age of 28, never lived long enough to see. The result is the arthouse movie that never was, the missing link between Warhol and Jarmusch in the canon of New York movies. The story follows a day in the life of an unrecognised artist, who needs to sell one of his paintings so that he can pay the rent before he is evicted. He wanders the city streets, strolling into clubs and bars, but cannot find any takers. But when he finally does, the buyer pays with a cheque and the search for cash starts all over again.

Connoisseurs of the early 1980s downtown scene will recognise the film's gallery of characters, featuring local celebrities Lydia Lunch, John Lurie and even a youthful Vincent Gallo. Music-wise, however, this is a definitely of interest to those with long memories and vast vinyl collections, spanning the formative rap of Melle Mel, the ghostly cyber-billy of electronic pioneers Suicide and the No Wave honking of arty jazz fusion outfit James White And The Blacks.

Surprisingly, these were the big names of their day, which makes the artist's quest to sell his paintings for just a few hundred bucks ­ of course, Basquiat's work now sells for hundreds of thousands ­ such a poignant irony.

Damon Wise