Anthology Film Archives

INFRASTRUCTURE ON FILM

March 14 – March 28

This appropriately multi-faceted series gathers together a diverse array of films that explore the infrastructure of the built environment, the various systems and networks that are conceived, designed, and engineered to encourage the functioning of our societies (while perpetually proving just as capable of turning destructive). Encompassing films about trains, mass transit systems, and highways; bridges, canals, and dams; and telephone networks and electrical grids, “Infrastructure on Film” demonstrates the myriad ways that filmmakers have probed the histories, changing technologies, and profound significances of systems that are often hidden or taken for granted but crucially important to the daily lives of each and every human being. It demonstrates too the fascination that these topics have exerted on documentary, experimental, and narrative filmmakers alike – everyone from Jean-Luc Godard and Bernardo Bertolucci, Sergio Leone and Bong Joon-ho, Joris Ivens and Frederick Wiseman, to Stan Brakhage, Shirley Clarke, and Barbara Hammer.

The series will continue in the spring with programs devoted to infrastructure-gone-bad, the infrastructure of the internet and other uniquely contemporary systems, and a sidebar series showcasing truckers on film!

Curated in collaboration with Rebecca Cleman (Electronic Arts Intermix).

Special thanks to Francesca Ansuini (RAI), Antonella Bonfanti (Canyon Cinema), Emilie Cauquy (Cinémathèque Française), Jack Durwood (Paramount), Kevin Jerome Everson, Devleta Filipovic (Kinoteka Bosne i Hercegovine), Chad Friedrichs, Amélie Garin-Davet (Cultural Services of the French Embassy), Emily Glaser (Zipporah Films), Paul Gordon & Tina Harvey (Library & Archives Canada), Jane Gutteridge (National Film Board of Canada), May Haduong (Academy Film Archives), Anke Hahn (Deutsche Kinemathek), Lawrence R. Hott, Alice Lea (LUX), Annamaria Licciardello & Elena Testa (Cineteca Nazionale), Inoue Mao (Kansai EPCO), Arianne Olthaar, Peter Bo Rappmund, Elena Rossi-Snook (NYPL), Paola Ruggiero (Cinecittà), Hirofumi Sakamoto (Postwar Japan Moving Image Archive), Frieder Schlaich (Filmgalerie 451), Hunter Snyder, Carsten Spicher (International Short Film Festival Oberhausen), and Carsten Zimmer (Arsenal).

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