Country: USA
Year: 2018
Duration: 39'
Between 1958 and 1960 Walter Hess and Manny Kirchheimer shot black and white 16mm film from Wall Street to midtown New York to the Delaware River. They documented the activities at a huge construction site, street life in Hell’s Kitchen, New York harbor traffic, and rare glimpses of nature. Then the footage was left unedited. In 2017 Kirchheimer took up the challenge of editing it. Once the picture was set he searched for music and sound effects that would mesh with the surrealism of the material. The result is a dynamic and compact symphony of a city.
Biography
film director
Manfred Kirchheimer
Manfred Kirchheimer (Saarbrücken, Germania, 1931) arrived in New York in 1936, after his family moved to United States to escape Nazi Germany. After receiving a B.A. from the City College of New York in 1952, he worked primarily as a film editor and he also began making his own films. A major theme in many of his documentaries is urban life. He teaches film and video production at the School of Visual Arts in New York City and makes films whenever he can raise the money for them. In his long career he has worked for the Dept. of Labor, NBC, 20th Century Fox, Leacock-Pennebaker-Drew, and MoMA.
FILMOGRAFIA
filmografia essenziale/essential filmography
Colossus on the River (doc., 1965), Haiku (doc., 1965), Leroy Douglas (doc., 1967), Claw (doc., 1968), All in the Same Boat (doc., 1972), Short Circuit (doc., 1973), Bridge High (doc., 1975), Stations of the Elevated (doc., 1980), We Were So Beloved (doc., 1986), Tall: The American Skyscraper & Louis Sullivan (doc., 2004), Art Is… The Permanent Revolution (doc., 2012), Canners (doc., 2014), Spraymasters (doc., 2008), Discovery in a Painting (doc., 2014), My Coffee With Jewish Friends (doc., 2017), Middle Class Money, Honey (doc., 2018).
Declaration
film director
“People have been asking me lately after seeing my films: Did you want to document the city? One even added, ‘while it is still here,’ which sounded ominous. I was sort of taken by this never-before-put-to-me question, and my first reaction was ‘no.’ […] But it turns out that if these films will add up to New York told and seen from the bottom up, the inside out, as it were. Never ever did I think of documenting New York, but New York had its way – and got documented.”
Cast
& Credits
regia, montaggio, suono/director, film editing, sound
Manfred Kirchheimer
fotografia/cinematography
Manfred Kirchheimer, Walter Hess
musica/music
Dmitrij Šostakovič, Claude Debussy, Sergej Sergeevič Prokof’ev, Johann Sebastian Bach, Noel Gay, Isham Jones, Gus Kahn
produttori/producers
Manfred Kirchheimer, Jacob Perlin
**
contatti/contacts
Metrograph
Jacob Perlin
jp@metrograph.com
www.metrograph.com
Manfred Kirchheimer
fotografia/cinematography
Manfred Kirchheimer, Walter Hess
musica/music
Dmitrij Šostakovič, Claude Debussy, Sergej Sergeevič Prokof’ev, Johann Sebastian Bach, Noel Gay, Isham Jones, Gus Kahn
produttori/producers
Manfred Kirchheimer, Jacob Perlin
**
contatti/contacts
Metrograph
Jacob Perlin
jp@metrograph.com
www.metrograph.com
