Symphony of a City

Man with a Movie Camera

May 1929 •Russian

A cameraman wanders around with a camera slung over his shoulder, documenting urban life with dazzling inventiveness.

Pikk Street

January 1966 •Estonian

Pikk Street is one of the most important thoroughfares of Tallinn’s Old Town. The picture playfully combines hidden camera footage with more observational images, employing shots from unusual angles; these are accompanied by specific sounds and interesting musical themes. The result is a true cinematic adventure.

Berlin: Symphony of a Great City

September 1927 •German

A day in the city of Berlin, which experienced an industrial boom in the 1920s, and still provides an insight into the living and working conditions at that time. Germany had just recovered a little from the worst consequences of the First World War, the great economic crisis was still a few years away and Hitler was not yet an issue at the time.

Broadway by Light

January 1958 •French

An experimental meditation on Times Square's marquees and iconic advertising that captures the concurrently seedy and dazzling aspects of New York's Great White Way.

The Hart of London

November 1970 •English

"The Hart of London" is an endlessly layered tour de force. It explores life and death, the sense of place and personal displacement, and the intricate aesthetics of representation. It is a personal and spiritual film, marked inevitably by Chambers’s knowledge that he had leukemia. The late American avant-garde filmmaker Stan Brakhage said of Hart, "If I named the five greatest films [ever made], this has got to be one of them." Even this high praise falls short of hyperbole. The Hart of London is at the centre of Chambers’s extraordinary achievement.

Last of a London Summer

September 2017 •English

The last days of summer captured on 16mm.

Hidden Cities

April 2010 •German

"The theme of the film HIDDEN CITIES is personal urban perceptions, which we call 'the city'. The city, as a living organism, reflecting social processes and interactions, economic relations, political conditions and private matters. In the city, human memories, desires and tragedies find expression in the form of designations and marks engraved in house walls and paving slabs. But what the city really is under this thick layer of signs, what it contains or conceals, is what we are researching in the HIDDEN CITIES project. The source material for the film are 9 sequential photo works created by Gusztáv Hámos between 1975 and 2010. Each of these 'city perceptions' depicts essential situations of urban experiences containing human and inhuman acts in a compact form. The cities in which the photo sequences have been made are Berlin, Budapest and New York – places with a traumatised past: Wars, dictatorships, terrorist catastrophes."

WATERPARK

June 2013 •English

Portrait of a waterpark.

I Am Belfast

April 2016 •English

Belfast, it's a city that is changing, changing because the people are leaving? But one came back, a 10,000 year old woman who claims that she is the city itself.

News To Home

December 2024 •English

Filmed images of Liverpool are accompanied by readings of a young woman's letters to her mother, as she contemplates the challenges of finding a home in a new city whilst missing the one she's left behind. Inspired by the work of Chantal Akerman.

Still Lives

February 2016 •English

'Still Lives' comprises a trilogy of films by Patrick Sheard; Lamenta, Libertas and Exitus, anthologized here in their entirety.

Song of Khartoum

May 1955 •English

Gubara was proud of the first color film in African cinema, which attempts to give an African response to the city symphony genre by capturing disparate images of daily life in Khartoum and setting it to music, particularly romantic Arabic songs.

IMG 0000

June 2023 •English

A frenetic found-footage documentary made entirely from “lost” unlabeled media on YouTube - weaving together nearly a thousand raw videos, each mistakenly or mindlessly uploaded under a generic filename (e.g., IMG 1326, IMG 5493…).

Passersby

March 2023 •English

Six lives intersect in a city symphony of chance encounters.

Chicago: The City To See in '63

Invalid date •English

A "city symphony" film, produced to encourage Photographic Society of America members to attend their 1963 conference in Chicago, City to See is a surprising film. It combines footage of Chicago with a deadpan commentary that pokes fun commercial travel films: "Chicago is my town," the narrator says wryly, "and no other town will do." Conneely was awarded a special prize by the Photographic Society of America for this film.

Rusty Threesome

October 2024 •Japanese

Yo - a hard working salary girl loses her mouth.

Libertas

February 2016 •English

Reno: A City Symphony Film

February 2021 •English

Two friends travel around the city of Reno, Nevada, and go skating at a nearby parking garage.

LIVESTOCK

February 2022 •English

Compiled from stock footage, Livestock is a visual poem exploring the digital, physical and metaphysical synergy of the modern workplace.

Half Sour

April 2014 •English

A group of young skateboarders find direction in their lives when they move to New York and start a pickle business.