Experimental films are among cinema’s earliest and most radical explorations of the city. Long before urban spaces became the natural setting for fictional narratives, filmmakers explored their dynamics through montage, rhythm, movement, and light. In these works, the city does not appear merely as a backdrop, but as a network of streets, facades, bridges, traffic, and people—as an organism whose energy unfolds only through the cinematic gaze. As part of our series “Cinema Above the City,” we are presenting a selection of classics and rediscovered gems from film history that explore the relationship between cinema and urban space in a wide variety of ways. From the early urban symphonies *Manhatta*, *Jeux des reflets et de la vitesse*, and *Rain*, through the pulsating visual compositions of Shirley Clarke, D. A. Pennebaker, and Marie Menken, to Claude Lelouch’s legendary *C’était un rendez-vous*, the program brings together films that not only depict the city but set it in motion.
Films
Games on Reflection and Speed
A frenzied view of Paris over the rails, a trip across the Seine by boat. In his debut work, Henri Chomette crosses tunnels and elevated railroads without a plot. Using techniques such as dissolves and time-lapse, Chomette transforms the dynamics of the city into an abstract visual experience.
Loan of the film print with kind support of LightCone.
Go! Go! Go!
Go Go Go is a tour de force of rapid camera movement and single-frame activity. Films of boats taken at the harbor in single frames, from a moving automobile, on the streets of New York, at a body-builders convention, and at other locations.
Loan of the film print with kind support of LightCone.
Manhatta
Manhatta documents the look of early 20th-century Manhattan. With the city as subject, the film consists of 65 shots sequenced in a loose non-narrative structure, beginning with the Staten Island ferry approaching Manhattan and ending with a sunset view from a skyscraper. It is considered by some to be the first American avant-garde film. The primary objective of the film is to explore the relationship between photography and film; camera movement is kept to a minimum, as is incidental motion within each shot. Each frame provides a view of the city that has been carefully arranged into abstract compositions. The intertitles include excerpts from the writings of Walt Whitman.
Loan of the film print with kind support of LightCone.
Bridges-Go-Round 1
New York City’s bridges dissolve into shifting abstractions through montage, superimposition, and color. Set to an electronic score by Louis and Bebe Barron, the film transforms familiar urban structures into an uncanny, alien landscape (an alternate version of the film features a jazz score by Teo Macero).
Loan of the film print with kind support of LightCone.
Daybreak Express
Set to a classic Duke Ellington recording "Daybreak Express", this is a five-minute short of the soon-to-be-demolished Third Avenue elevated subway station in New York City.
Loan of the film print with kind support of LightCone.