Jem Cohen Occupy Wall Street – Newsreels

Five short films about the Occupy protest movement.

documentary
TH 29.03.2012 20:30

The American filmmaker, Jem Cohen, made five short films on Wall Street, Times Square and Zuccoti Park in New York about the Occupy movement that protested last year against the banks’ greed, which had caused the worldwide economic crises. Cohen’s short films observe the protest movement systematically and he attempts, in the tradition of illustrious examples like Dziga Vertov, Chris Marker, Humphrey Jennings, Joris Ivens and Agnès Varda (to whom the films are also dedicated) to interpret them cinematically. Cohen takes you with him across the frontier of reporting to a cinematic universe in which experiment, humor, doubt, poetry and lyricism have their place in the imagery. Cohen’s Newsreels force you as viewer to remain for a while in the same place, instead of – as in television style – to navigate from one high spot to the other. He shows that demonstrating takes time and space. And sometimes is boring. He takes you among the demonstrators who walked from the New York Public Library to Times Square on 15th October. Between the advertising hoardings and logos, the trademarks and brand names, the iconic companies which shape the New York street image. They let you look at their faces. Faces of people who are united in a common interest, but also entirely themselves. And via this he presents through that calm, observational gaze how confusing and turbulent this protest movement also is.

In English

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