cohen/ex review
bleh, working from home today is not turning out to be as much fun as i'd hoped. my air conditioner is broken and it's one of those grimy nyc days where the sweat just keeps on rolling and the dirty air clings to your skin.
as promised, my thoughts on "building a broken mousetrap":
when i was a teenager i saw myself growing up and having a life like jem cohen's. shooting small gauge film out of greyhound windows, touring around with arty punks, roaming new york city shooting for no project in particular. sitting in the ifp center and watching this skinny man show his small films i felt glad that someone had that life and equally glad that it was not me.
the evening screening was conducted in a conversational style. cohen and scott macaulay chatted on stage, screened a couple of shorts, chatted some more, screened the feature, took some questions, showed another short. it's the type of format that is rare to see outside of a film festival, and new yorkers are blessed to have a venue like the ifp for these events on a regular basis.
cohen makes small films. 8 or 16mm, short running time, unambitious. the shorts he showed all left me quite unexcited. maybe i'm just a jaded new yorker, but 5 minutes of shots of people walking around in midtown set to what sounds very much like godspeed you black emperor just feels so done, so easy, and kind of pointless. the dangerous beauty of images of people sleeping on a bus while the landscape out fogged window tears by had me going for a moment. what will the subjects do if they wake and see this funny little man pointing a camera at them? the risk, the stakes, are what make this sort of film interesting to me. so it took the wind out of my sails when i saw andy moor, and realised that it was a tour bus and that these people were known to jem, and that there was no risk of confrontation. i felt cheated, especially when an audience member asked precisely about the risk of being caught stealing these images and he played it off as if the risk really was there.
it is a strange thing to watch a concert one was at several years earlier played back on a screen. shot from cameras on either side of the knitting factory's tight little stage, the performance is given a terribly claustrophobic feeling, only accentuated by the paucity of images of the audience (if you look really closely you can see me in the middle of the frame a couple of times). anyone who's seen the ex play knows that it is an intensely physical experience. with a spirited crowd bouncing off each other and the band veering from tight, sharp grooves drawn from a deep knowledge of diverse musical traditions, to improvised noise produced by torturous physical manipulations of their instruments, the relationship between art and revolutionary action is becomes apparent. sitting still in a cold dark room separated from our neighbours by cushioned armrests does not produce the same effect. in spite of the quality of the sound recording being very good, the norms of cinema projection dictate that sound is not anywhere near as loud as at a rock show, further diminishing the overwhelming power of the music. in spite of all of these obstacles, the power of certain tracks forces its way through, notably "IP man" is an absolutely devastating indictment of consumerism, and cohen's selection of cutaways to images of electronics behind glass reflecting neon are appropriate, even if they are exceedingly obvious. as a snapshot of a moment in time, the "Henry K" sequence cut with images from the republican national convention demonstrations which happened just a fortnight before the concert works well too.
overall while i'm glad that this film exists as a document of this moment, it fails to capture the spirit of its subject. all of you who care about the band will enjoy it, but i fear it has little to offer those who are not already committed to the ex.
as promised, my thoughts on "building a broken mousetrap":
when i was a teenager i saw myself growing up and having a life like jem cohen's. shooting small gauge film out of greyhound windows, touring around with arty punks, roaming new york city shooting for no project in particular. sitting in the ifp center and watching this skinny man show his small films i felt glad that someone had that life and equally glad that it was not me.
the evening screening was conducted in a conversational style. cohen and scott macaulay chatted on stage, screened a couple of shorts, chatted some more, screened the feature, took some questions, showed another short. it's the type of format that is rare to see outside of a film festival, and new yorkers are blessed to have a venue like the ifp for these events on a regular basis.
cohen makes small films. 8 or 16mm, short running time, unambitious. the shorts he showed all left me quite unexcited. maybe i'm just a jaded new yorker, but 5 minutes of shots of people walking around in midtown set to what sounds very much like godspeed you black emperor just feels so done, so easy, and kind of pointless. the dangerous beauty of images of people sleeping on a bus while the landscape out fogged window tears by had me going for a moment. what will the subjects do if they wake and see this funny little man pointing a camera at them? the risk, the stakes, are what make this sort of film interesting to me. so it took the wind out of my sails when i saw andy moor, and realised that it was a tour bus and that these people were known to jem, and that there was no risk of confrontation. i felt cheated, especially when an audience member asked precisely about the risk of being caught stealing these images and he played it off as if the risk really was there.
it is a strange thing to watch a concert one was at several years earlier played back on a screen. shot from cameras on either side of the knitting factory's tight little stage, the performance is given a terribly claustrophobic feeling, only accentuated by the paucity of images of the audience (if you look really closely you can see me in the middle of the frame a couple of times). anyone who's seen the ex play knows that it is an intensely physical experience. with a spirited crowd bouncing off each other and the band veering from tight, sharp grooves drawn from a deep knowledge of diverse musical traditions, to improvised noise produced by torturous physical manipulations of their instruments, the relationship between art and revolutionary action is becomes apparent. sitting still in a cold dark room separated from our neighbours by cushioned armrests does not produce the same effect. in spite of the quality of the sound recording being very good, the norms of cinema projection dictate that sound is not anywhere near as loud as at a rock show, further diminishing the overwhelming power of the music. in spite of all of these obstacles, the power of certain tracks forces its way through, notably "IP man" is an absolutely devastating indictment of consumerism, and cohen's selection of cutaways to images of electronics behind glass reflecting neon are appropriate, even if they are exceedingly obvious. as a snapshot of a moment in time, the "Henry K" sequence cut with images from the republican national convention demonstrations which happened just a fortnight before the concert works well too.
overall while i'm glad that this film exists as a document of this moment, it fails to capture the spirit of its subject. all of you who care about the band will enjoy it, but i fear it has little to offer those who are not already committed to the ex.