While life pulsates in crowded and hectic Manhattan, oppressive emptiness and silence reign in New York's Lower East Side, just a few blocks away. Permanent Vacation follows the life of the protagonist Aloysious Parker, a young man without a home, education, or job, over the course of two and a half days. He roams restlessly through the streets, always a little ahead of what seems to be pursuing him. Allie, who is 16 years old at the time, has already met and lived with a wide variety of people who, like him, fall outside of normative society, and whose stories we hear. Drawing on the extremely vibrant New York post-punk scene of the late 1970s, Jim Jarmusch's lyrical film debut traces the fleeting coming-of-age attitude of a young generation embodied by the sensitive yet self-absorbed protagonist Chris Parker, who is in a state of constant, directionless motion. A film imbued with quiet melancholy and staged in a dreamlike manner.

Print from the collection of Kino im Blauen Salon (HfG KA)