Broadway Boogie Woogie: A City Unfinished
Monday July 20th - 7:30PM
Brecht Forum
451 West Street, New York, NY 10014
This will be the opening program of Red Channels' summer collaboration with the Brecht Forum on their "Visual Liberation" summer film/talk series. This year there will be a special emphasis on the "Right to the City," where a number of the film programs will touch on the history of New York City on film; how the people of the city navigate structures laid out by institutions, organizations, and corporations in which they have no voice; and taking control of public and private space. BROADWAY BOOGIE WOOGIE is a program of silent black and white short works often referred to as "city symphony" or "city portrait" films.
The first of the night's two programs was shot entirely in New York City, ranging from the work of the Thomas Edison film company in 1903, up to the first filmmaking efforts of writer James Agee and photographer Helen Levitt.
The second program will be the debut feature of Mikhail Kaufman, best known as the cinematographer and brother of Dziga Vertov (born Denis Kaufman). Mikhail's MOSCOW (1927) pre-dates Vertov's 1929 masterpiece Man with a Movie Camera, the ultimate city symphony film, in which Mikhail is in a sense the star.
All of the films will have live musical accompaniment by Citizens Ontological Music Agenda.
DOUBLE FEATURE
RIGHT TO THE CITY:
7:30
--New York City “Ghetto” Fish Market - James Blair Smith, 1903, 2 minutes
--Skyscrapers of New York City, from the North River - James Blair Smith, 1903, 3 minutes
--Manhatta - Paul Strand & Charles Sheeler, 1921, 6 minutes
--A Bronx Morning - Jay Leyda, 1931, 11 minutes
--Footnote to Fact - Lewis Jacobs, 1933, 8 minutes
--In the Street - James Agee, Helen Levitt, Janice Loeb, 1948, 16 minutes
TOTAL RUNNING TIME: 46 minutes | Digital Projection
8:30
--Moscow - Mikhail Kaufman & Ilya Kopalin, 1927, 59 minutes
TOTAL RUNNING TIME: 59 minutes | Digital Projection
With live musical accompaniment by Citizens Ontological Music Agenda: David Brahinsky, trumpet; Sten Hostfalt, mandolin; Andy O'Neill, drums; Lex Samu, coronet; Ken Silverman, guitar & percussion; Blaise Siwula, reeds.
Speakers:
--Cassim Shepard of Urban Omnibus
COMA
Urban Omnibus
Brecht Forum
(The Sheeler, Strand, Leyda, and Jacobs films are available on the Unseen Cinema DVD Picturing a Metropolis (2005) released by Image.)