A seminar about Film, Art and the City

This seminar which comprises film screenings, deals with the city symphony, a genre hovering between documentary, narrative, and experimental film. Well-known examples include Manhatta (Paul Strand & Charles Sheeler, 1921), Berlin: Die Symphonie einer Großstadt (Walther Ruttmann, 1927), and Man With a Movie Camera (Dziga Vertov, 1929). However, in the late 1920s and early 1930s, many similar films were produced on both sides of the Atlantic.

Most of these films emphatically depict the metropolis as the locus of modernity. More than anything, though, these films aspired to be just as modern as their subject matter. Formal similarities with contemporaneous avant-garde art are numerous. Thus, the spontaneous character of these non-studio-bound depictions of urban life evokes the restless, impressionist gaze of the flâneur, whereas numerous bird’s-eye-views and diagonal camera set-ups call to mind constructivist photography.
Furthermore, by means of experimental techniques, city symphonies not only depict the metropolis, they also evoke the rhythms of metropolitan life. One finds in these films very clear representations of modernity as it had been theorized and conceptualized by urban theorists such as Georg Simmel, Walter Benjamin, and Siegfried Kracauer. Celebrating the dynamics of modern urban life, city symphonies suggest that the cinematic apparatus is the medium best suited for capturing these phenomena.
In addition to these issues, this seminar also deals with the city symphony’s afterlife, with post war and contemporary equivalents of city symphonies, and with the ways the conventions of the genre found their way into feature films, including both classical Hollywood and late-modernist art films.

Lecturers
- Dr. Steven Jacobs (B) is an art historian who specializes in the photographic and cinematic representations of architecture, cities, and landscapes. In 2007, he published The Wrong House: The Architecture of Alfred Hitchcock. He has taught at several universities and art schools in Belgium and the Netherlands. He currently teaches at Sint-Lukas Brussels, KASK Gent, and Erasmus University Rotterdam.
- Anthony Kinik (CA) is a PhD candidate with the Department of Art History and Communication Studies at McGill University whose thesis focuses on contemporary urban peripatetic cinema. His work deals largely with cinematic depictions of the city, in conjunction with photography, literature, and music. He has taught film studies, communication studies, and cultural studies courses in Vancouver, Montreal, Ottawa, Kingston, and Bonn.

Schedule (to be confirmed)

Note: Film titles only indicate the content of the sessions. Not all films will be entirely screened. Screenings in the HISK auditorium are on DVD whereas screenings in OFFoff and Filmplateau respect original media (16mm, 35mm, video, etcetera).

All lectures are in English

Tuesday 8 July 2008: 9:30 am: registration and coffee/tea

Session 1 (Tuesday 8 July, 10:00 am – 1:00 pm, HISK)
General Introduction: Modernity, the City, and Cinema

Session 2 (Tuesday 8 July, 3:00 pm – 5:00 pm, HISK)
New York: Stage of Urban Modernity (Part 1)
Manhatta (Paul Strand & Charles Sheeler, 1921), Twentyfour-Dollar Island (Robert Flaherty, 1926), Skyscraper Symphony (Robert Florey, 1929)

Session 3 (Tuesday 8 July, 8:00 pm, Art Cinema OFFoff, Lange Violettestraat 237, 9000 Gent)
Variations and Afterlife (Program Curated by Svend Thomsen, OFFoff)
Berliner Stilleben (László Moholy-Nagy, 1931), NYC (Jeffrey Scher, 1976), De Maasbruggen (Paul Schuitema, 1937), The Black Tower (John Smith, 1987), Autumn Spectrum (Hy Hirsh, 1957)

Wednesday 9 July 2008: 9:30 am: reception (coffee/tea)

Session 4 (Wednesday 9 July, 10:00 am – 1:00 pm, HISK)
New York: Stage of Urban Modernity (Part 2)
Manhattan Medley (Bonney Powell, 1931), A Bronx Morning (Jay Leyda, 1931), Footnote to Fact (Lewis Jacobs, 1933), Seeing the World (Rudy Burckhardt, 1937), Pursuit of Happiness (Rudy Burckhardt, 1940), Autumn Fire (Herman Weinberg, 1933)

Session 5 (Wednesday 9 July, 3:00 pm- 5:00 pm, HISK)
French City Symphonies
Rien Que les Heures (Alberto Cavalcanti, 1926), Paris Qui Dort (René Clair, 1925), A propos de Nice (Jean Vigo, 1930)

Session 6 (Wednesday 10 July, 8:00 pm, FilmPlateau, Paddenhoek 3, 9000 Gent)
Dziga Vertov
The Man with the Movie Camera (Dziga Vertov, 1929, 68’, 35mm with live music on piano by Johan Derycke)

Thursday 10 July 2008: 9:30 am: reception (coffee/tea)

Session 7 (Thursday 10 July, 10:00 am – 1:00 pm, HISK)
Berlin: Stage of Urban Modernity (Part 1)
Berlin: die Symphonie der Grosstadt (Walther Ruttmann, 1927)

Session 8 (Thursday 10 July, 3:00 pm – 5:00 pm, HISK)
Berlin: Stage of Urban Modernity (Part 2)
Menschen am Sonntag (Robert Siodmak & Edgar G. Ulmer, 1929)

Session 9 (Thursday 10 July, 8:00 pm – 9:30 pm, HISK)
Afterlife and Conclusions

With the support of Art Cinema OFFoff, Filmplateau/University Ghent, Hogeschool Sint-Lukas Brussel, Vlaamse Dienst voor Filmcultuur, the Flemish Community and the City of Ghent.