By capturing 1920s New York – and all the glamour, danger and alienation it contained – Paul Strand set the foundations for a skyscraping subgenre
Some of the greatest silent films had no actors and no story. Many of the very first films fall into this category: the short films we call “actualities”, which capture glimpses of everyday life (factory workers flooding through a gate, a train entering a station). But after the actualities came something more poetic, an avant garde subgenre that gave birth to masterpieces and helped people to understand the changing world of the early 20th century.
In the 1920s, the “city symphony” transformed the raw material of actualities into something more musical, modern and unexpected. The genre was born with Paul Strand and Charles Sheeler’s Manhatta (1921), which places lines from a Walt Whitman poem (Mannahatta) between unforgettable images of New York City’s architecture, towering over its residents.
Some of the greatest silent films had no actors and no story. Many of the very first films fall into this category: the short films we call “actualities”, which capture glimpses of everyday life (factory workers flooding through a gate, a train entering a station). But after the actualities came something more poetic, an avant garde subgenre that gave birth to masterpieces and helped people to understand the changing world of the early 20th century.
In the 1920s, the “city symphony” transformed the raw material of actualities into something more musical, modern and unexpected. The genre was born with Paul Strand and Charles Sheeler’s Manhatta (1921), which places lines from a Walt Whitman poem (Mannahatta) between unforgettable images of New York City’s architecture, towering over its residents.
- 3/21/2016
- by Pamela Hutchinson
- The Guardian - Film News
Get your beret and warm up the espresso! Some of the most famous deep-dish art film is here -- in HD -- starting with attempts to translate various art 'isms' to the screen, to graphics-oriented abstractions, to 'city symphonies' to the dream visions of Maya Deren and beyond. The careful remasters reproduce proper projection speeds and original music. Masterworks of American Avant-Garde Experimental Film 1920-1970 Blu-ray + DVD Flicker Alley 1920-1970 / B&W and Color / 1:33 full frame / 418 min. / Street Date October 6, 2015 / 59.95 With films by James Agee, Kenneth Anger, Bruce Baillie, Stan Brakhage, James Broughton, Rudolph Burckhardt, Mary Ellen Bute, Joseph Cornell, Jim Davis, Maya Deren, Marcel Duchamp, Emien Etting, Oksar Fischinger, Robert Florey, Amy Greenfield, A. Hackenschmied, Alexander Hammid, Hillary Harris, Hy Hirsh, Ian Hugo, Lawrence Janiac, Lawrence Jordan, Owen Land, Francis Lee, Fernand Léger, Helen Levitt, Jan Leyda, Janice Loeb, Jonas Mekas, Marie Menken, Dudley Murphy, Ted Nemeth, Bernard O'Brien,...
- 10/6/2015
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
For nearly a century, New York City has been the place where this country's most significant independent-cinema movements have been born. The metropolis is exalted in Paul Strand and Charles Sheeler's Manhatta (1921), widely considered the first U.S. avant-garde film. It is where the New American Cinema, a collective that advocated for radical changes in American filmmaking, began to coalesce in the late 1950s. Andy Warhol and Jack Smith, the patron saints of queer cinema, shot many of their homo fantasias here, and the Lower East Side provided the backdrop for No Wave cinema in the Seventies and Eighties.
Yet one of the richest chapters in this fecund history, the work of African American filmmakers in the five boroughs, has too often been overlooked or under- rec...
Yet one of the richest chapters in this fecund history, the work of African American filmmakers in the five boroughs, has too often been overlooked or under- rec...
- 2/4/2015
- Village Voice
On Sunday 6 February, fans of silent cinema were treated to the first event of the Barbican Centre's 'City Symphonies' series. Berlin, Symphony of a City (1927) and Manhatta (1921) both played to a packed out audience, who were no doubt drawn by the opportunity to see these gems on 35mm film and with live musical accompaniment by REFLEKTOR2 (Jan Kopinski on saxophone, Steve Iliffe on piano).
The afternoon's programme began with the short avant-garde film Manhatta, an experimental collaboration by painter Charles Sheeler and photographer Paul Strand that produced this visually stunning representation of New York. Images of the vast metropolis are cut with intertitles taken from Walt Whitman's Sparkles on the Wheel, which gives the film a slow, poetic rhythm.
The montage editing used creates an association of meaning between shots. Aerial views of people swarming en masse around the city like ants are interweaved with a shot of hundreds...
The afternoon's programme began with the short avant-garde film Manhatta, an experimental collaboration by painter Charles Sheeler and photographer Paul Strand that produced this visually stunning representation of New York. Images of the vast metropolis are cut with intertitles taken from Walt Whitman's Sparkles on the Wheel, which gives the film a slow, poetic rhythm.
The montage editing used creates an association of meaning between shots. Aerial views of people swarming en masse around the city like ants are interweaved with a shot of hundreds...
- 2/9/2011
- by Daniel Green
- CineVue
With 2010 only a week over, it already feels like best-of and top-ten lists have been pouring in for months, and we’re already tired of them: the ranking, the exclusions (and inclusions), the rules and the qualifiers. Some people got to see films at festivals, others only catch movies on video; and the ability for us, or any publication, to come up with a system to fairly determine who saw what when and what they thought was the best seems an impossible feat. That doesn’t stop most people from doing it, but we liked the fantasy double features we did last year and for our 3rd Writers Poll we thought we'd do it again.
I asked our contributors to pick a single new film they saw in 2010—in theaters or at a festival—and creatively pair it with an old film they saw in 2010 to create a unique double feature.
I asked our contributors to pick a single new film they saw in 2010—in theaters or at a festival—and creatively pair it with an old film they saw in 2010 to create a unique double feature.
- 1/10/2011
- MUBI
Sept. 8
7:30 p.m.
Pacific Film Archive
2575 Bancroft Way
Berkeley, CA 94720
Hosted by: Pacific Film Archive
To mark the 10th anniversary of the release of the massive underground and obscure film DVD collection Unseen Cinema: Early American Avant-Garde Film, 1893-1941, curator Bruce Posner presents a night of obscure and rarely publicly screened films, including several classics of the avant-garde.
Included in the program is what is considered the first underground film produced in the U.S.: Charles Sheeler and Paul Strand’s Manhatta. Completed in 1921, Manhatta is a visual poem celebrating the architecture of NYC.
During that same time period, the early avant-garde was in full swing in Europe and tonight’s program will also include several of that era’s most famous works, such as Man Ray’s Le Retour à la raison (Return to Reason), Marcel Duchamp’s Anémic cinéma, and Fernand Léger’s Ballet mécanique. (To...
7:30 p.m.
Pacific Film Archive
2575 Bancroft Way
Berkeley, CA 94720
Hosted by: Pacific Film Archive
To mark the 10th anniversary of the release of the massive underground and obscure film DVD collection Unseen Cinema: Early American Avant-Garde Film, 1893-1941, curator Bruce Posner presents a night of obscure and rarely publicly screened films, including several classics of the avant-garde.
Included in the program is what is considered the first underground film produced in the U.S.: Charles Sheeler and Paul Strand’s Manhatta. Completed in 1921, Manhatta is a visual poem celebrating the architecture of NYC.
During that same time period, the early avant-garde was in full swing in Europe and tonight’s program will also include several of that era’s most famous works, such as Man Ray’s Le Retour à la raison (Return to Reason), Marcel Duchamp’s Anémic cinéma, and Fernand Léger’s Ballet mécanique. (To...
- 9/5/2010
- by Mike Everleth
- Underground Film Journal
This isn’t a terribly exciting or sexy update, but I want to keep pimping out my Underground Film Timeline. Up until now, I’m not sure if it’s usefulness has been all that apparent, but I’m liking where it’s going.
Phase 2 of the Timeline project involved me integrating it better with Bad Lit’s sister site, the Underground Film Guide (Ufg). And, yes, by “integrating” I mean adding links on both sites. This is how it works: Let’s say you’re perusing the 1960 — 1969 page of the Timeline and come across the name of filmmaker Storm de Hirsch, who in 1965 made her most famous film Peyote Queen.
De Hirsch isn’t one of the more famous of the ’60s underground filmmakers, like Brakhage, Anger, Kuchar, et. al. So, you click on her name to get more info on her on the Ufg where you can see her complete filmography — or,...
Phase 2 of the Timeline project involved me integrating it better with Bad Lit’s sister site, the Underground Film Guide (Ufg). And, yes, by “integrating” I mean adding links on both sites. This is how it works: Let’s say you’re perusing the 1960 — 1969 page of the Timeline and come across the name of filmmaker Storm de Hirsch, who in 1965 made her most famous film Peyote Queen.
De Hirsch isn’t one of the more famous of the ’60s underground filmmakers, like Brakhage, Anger, Kuchar, et. al. So, you click on her name to get more info on her on the Ufg where you can see her complete filmography — or,...
- 7/28/2010
- by Mike Everleth
- Underground Film Journal
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