Film Screenings / Programs / Series
WE ARE HERE: SCENES FROM THE STREETS
November 1 – December 22
November 1-December 22, 2024
This fall, the International Center of Photography (ICP) presents a major exhibition entitled “We Are Here: Scenes from the Streets”. Spotlighting contemporary street photography from over 30 international iconic street photographers, the exhibition highlights the diverse perspectives and techniques that define modern street photographers and emphasizes the role of the streets as a canvas for illustrating change. The work of these intergenerational and geographically disparate artists encourages an expansive re-viewing of “street photography.” It opens up important discussions on how “the street” and public space are places of community, joy, self-expression, advocacy, changing landscapes, and social dynamics as seen through the street photographer’s lens.
In conjunction with the exhibition, Anthology hosts a wide-ranging film series, throughout November and December, that explores the intersections of street photography and cinema. The series includes documentaries by and about notable street photographers, but also showcases films that qualify, in their own right, as works of moving-image street photography (such as the work of Khalik Allah, Charlie Ahearn, Mira Nair, John Wilson, Heddy Honigmann, Jem Cohen, and others), or that expand the notion of what qualifies as street photography (John Smith’s THE GIRL CHEWING GUM, William H. Whyte’s THE SOCIAL LIFE OF SMALL URBAN SPACES, or Tom Jarmusch’s SOMETIMES CITY).
“We Are Here: Scenes from the Streets” is on view at the ICP (84 Ludlow Street) from September 26, 2024-January 6, 2025. The exhibition is curated by Guest Curator Isolde Brielmaier, with Noa Wynn, Independent Curatorial Assistant.
Special thanks to all the filmmakers; to Jacque Donaldson Bailey, Izzy Dow, Sara Ickow, Haley Kane, and Marley Trigg Stewart (ICP); and to Neal Block (Magnolia Pictures); Bob Hunter (Icarus Films); Marian Luntz (Museum of Fine Arts Houston); and Brian Meacham (Yale Film Archive).
FILMMAKER IN PERSON!
Charlie Ahearn
WILD STYLE
1982, 82 min, 16mm
Charlie Ahearn’s seminal WILD STYLE is a loosely-scripted narrative film that also functions as an invaluable glimpse into the graffiti and hip-hop cultures, showcasing the art and music of legends such as Fab 5 Freddy and graffiti artist Lee Quiñones. Its story follows the exploits of maverick tagger Zoro (Quiñones), whose work attracts the attention of an East Village art fancier (Patti Astor) who commissions him to paint the stage for a giant Rapper’s Convention, and features additional appearances from Grandmaster Flash, Busy Bee, The Cold Crush Brothers, and more.
Fri, Nov 1 at 7:30, Sat, Nov 23 at 9:00, and Sat, Dec 21 at 9:00.
Cheryl Dunn
EVERYBODY STREET
2013, 83 min, DCP
EVERYBODY STREET illuminates the lives and work of New York’s iconic street photographers – including Bruce Davidson, Mary Ellen Mark, Elliott Erwitt, Ricky Powell, and Jamel Shabazz – and the incomparable city that has inspired them for decades. Shot by renowned photographer Cheryl Dunn on both black-and-white 16mm and color HD video, the documentary pays tribute to the spirit of street photography through a cinematic exploration of New York City, and captures the visceral rush, singular perseverance, and at times immediate danger customary to these artists.
Preceded by:
William Klein CONTACTS: WILLIAM KLEIN 1983, 15 min, 35mm-to-digital
“Klein dissects the contact sheet from one recent roll of film, deconstructing his editing technique and injecting a brutally honest assessment of his art. As the New York Times put it, ‘Half a century of work can add up to two blinks of an eye.’” –WALKER ART CENTER
Total running time: ca. 105 min.
Sat, Nov 2 at 4:30 and Fri, Dec 20 at 6:30.
Khalik Allah
FIELD NIGGAS
2015, 60 min, digital
“With vast empathy and spontaneous imagination, Khalik Allah revitalizes the genre of the observational documentary and transforms several simple technical tricks into a vision of the world. Filming in the summer of 2014 at and near the corner of 125th Street and Lexington Avenue, videotaping and interviewing people who hang out there – most of them black, many drug addicted, some homeless, some discussing their prison time – Allah, doing his own handheld cinematography, presents his subjects in a dreamlike slow motion that turns video into a fluid transfiguration of painted portraiture. He also desynchronizes the soundtrack, matching interviews and discussions only approximately to the images. Allah engages the movie’s participants in tough and insightful discussions about the police (who are seen on-screen, too), violence, substance abuse, and the inescapable impact of racism. For all its diagnostic insight of political ruin, the film evokes inner complexities that defy harsh circumstances with a virtually literary exaltation. The result is an intimate movie with a metaphysical grandeur, a detailed local inquiry that displays the crushing power of societal forces as well as the passion and vitality of those who endure.” –Richard Brody, THE NEW YORKER
Preceded by:
Khalik Allah
URBAN RASHOMON
2013, 21 min, digital
“With raw, harrowing honesty, Khalik Allah explores the complex relationship between artist and subject as he reflects on his friendship with a homeless addict living on the streets of Harlem.” –CRITERION
Total running time: ca. 85 min.
Sat, Nov 2 at 7:00 and Fri, Nov 29 at 9:15.
Dayong Zhao
STREET LIFE / NANJING LU
2012, 98 min, DCP. In Mandarin with English subtitles.
Every year, hundreds of thousands of Chinese migrants are drawn to the allure of Shanghai, one of the world’s most vibrant cities, with hopes of earning a decent living. Some end up in the dark alleys of Nanjing Road, Shanghai’s largest shopping street, where they learn to hustle and scrape together any kind of living they can. Dayong Zhao arrived in Shanghai in 2004 and began documenting their lives using digital video. He saw their stories as overlooked portraits of the deep social impact caused by China’s rapid economic growth. Zhao uses bold, exaggerated compositions in order to emphasize the relationship between his vagrant subjects and the city streets they inhabit. The result is a raw, vivid portrait of physical and psychological rootlessness.
Sat, Nov 2 at 9:15 and Fri, Dec 20 at 9:00.
WRONG SIDE OF THE LENS
Created by Josh Ethan Johnson, WRONG SIDE OF THE LENS is a documentary series that explores the lives of street photographers. Turning the camera on masters of the form who are accustomed to being on the other side of the lens, the series investigates why artists from a wide variety of backgrounds are drawn to the same calling, provides glimpses into what went into the creation of some of the photographers’ most indelible images, and gives them the chance to reflect on what is usually a solitary activity.
JILL FREEDMAN: YOU SOUND LIKE MY FUCKING MOTHER 2023, 24 min, digital
ESTEVAN ORIOL: JUST ANOTHER DAY IN EAST LA 2023, 17 min, digital
RICHARD SANDLER: A LIE THAT TELLS THE TRUTH 2023, 18 min, digital
Total running time: ca. 65 min.
Sun, Nov 3 at 4:00.
CHARLIE AHEARN IN PERSON!
Charlie Ahearn
DOIN’ TIME IN TIMES SQUARE
1991, 39 min, video
During the production of WILD STYLE in 1980, Ahearn moved with his wife Jane Dickson to a corner loft with views of 8th Ave and 43rd St. Awakened nightly by howling from the street, he was ready with his video camera to shoot the transgender habitués of the infamous hangout, Sally’s Hideaway, throwing garbage cans at cops. Show World, Dobbs Hats, and Paradise Alley offered lovely backdrops to another drug deal gone bad. Home movies of his son Joe’s birthday parties and the arrival of his daughter Eve clashed with street fights down below. Times Square’s New Year’s Eve mob scenes marked the passage of time until Ahearn’s building was demolished to make way for the new Disney-fied Times Square.
Józef Robakowski
FROM MY WINDOW / Z MOJEGO OKNA
1978-99, 19 min, 16mm-to-digital
“In 1978, Robakowski moved into an apartment in a newly-built high-rise in the center of Łódź. That’s when he began filming the people and events he could see from his kitchen window. Looking down onto the public square below, his witty pseudo-documentary observes the daily activities of his neighbors and mass gatherings such as the annual May Day marches. …[The] film spans 20 years with an invisible, omniscient narrator in the manner of a classic 19th-century novel.” –Walter Seidl, KONTAKT COLLECTION
Eve Heller
ASTOR PLACE
1997, 10 min, 16mm, silent
“Passersby at Astor Place in New York City speak silent volumes as they move by the mirrored surface of a diner window. I wanted to capture the unscripted choreography of the street, its dance of gazes and riddle of identities.” –Eve Heller
Total running time: ca. 75 min.
Sun, Nov 3 at 6:15 and Sun, Dec 1 at 8:30.
FILMMAKER IN PERSON!
Charlie Ahearn
JAMEL SHABAZZ STREET PHOTOGRAPHER
2013, 81 min, digital
In the infancy of hip-hop, Brooklyn-born photographer Jamel Shabazz documented the pioneers of music and style who would launch an enduring worldwide phenomenon. In JAMEL SHABAZZ STREET PHOTOGRAPHER, Charlie Ahearn pays tribute to both Shabazz and those who defined hip-hop before it had definition. More than just vintage shots of kids rocking sneakers and savvy street style in Times Square and Fort Greene Park, Shabazz’s photographs have hundreds of stories behind them, and Ahearn’s film gives voice to these images with intimate interviews with Shabazz himself, graffiti pioneer and hip-hop historian Fred “Fab 5 Freddy” Brathwaite, legendary rapper KRS-One, and many others.
Sun, Nov 3 at 8:30 and Sun, Dec 1 at 6:00.
Sherief Elkatsha
CAIRO DRIVE
2013, 79 min, DCP. In Arabic with English subtitles.
“CAIRO DRIVE expertly balances humor, frustration and a distinctive sense of fatalistic irony to offer a view of Egypt unseen in recent documentaries about the Arab Spring. Shot before, during and after the revolution, Sherief Elkatsha’s entertaining film explores Cairo from the street level through the perspectives of its drivers. Fighting congestion, navigating in the absence of any apparent traffic laws and deciphering the surprisingly eloquent language of car horns, they represent a cross-section of Egyptians trying to make their way through a country fraying at its edges.” –DOC NYC
Preceded by:
Mira Nair
JAMA MASJID STREET JOURNAL
1979, 18 min, 16mm-to-digital
Mira Nair’s personal record of street life around the Jama Masjid, or Great Mosque, in the old city of Delhi, India.
Total running time: ca. 100 min.
Mon, Nov 4 at 6:15 and Sat, Nov 30 at 8:30.
Heddy Honigmann
METAL AND MELANCHOLY
1993, 80 min, 16mm-to-digital. In Spanish with English subtitles.
In this offbeat “road movie,” acclaimed documentarian Heddy Honigmann travels with, and records the stories of, taxi drivers in Lima. In the early 1990s, in response to Peru’s inflationary economy and a government destabilized by corruption and Shining Path terrorism, many middle-class professionals used their own cars to moonlight as taxi drivers in order to weather the financial crisis. Through the filmmaker’s distinctive approach – “I don’t do interviews,” Honigmann has explained, “I have conversations” – METAL AND MELANCHOLY explores how these part-time cabbies, including a teacher, a Ministry of Justice employee, a film actor, and a policeman, among others, manage to navigate through Lima’s congested, pothole-filled streets in dilapidated cars whose survival techniques are as fascinating as those of their owners.
Mon, Nov 4 at 8:45 and Sat, Dec 21 at 4:15.
SNEAK PREVIEW SCREENING! FILMMAKER IN PERSON!
Raoul Peck
ERNEST COLE: LOST AND FOUND
2024, 105 min, DCP
South African photographer Ernest Cole was the first to expose the horrors of apartheid to a worldwide audience. His book “House of Bondage”, published in 1967 when he was only 27 years old, led him into exile in NYC and Europe for the rest of his life, never to find his bearings. Raoul Peck recounts his wanderings, his turmoil as an artist, and his anger, on a daily basis, at the silence or complicity of the Western world in the face of the horrors of the Apartheid regime. He also recounts how, in 2017, 60,000 negatives of his work were discovered in the safe of a Swedish bank.
Tues, Nov 19 at 8:00. Raoul Peck will be here in person for a Q&A moderated by Laylah Amatullah Barrayn. Barrayn is an award-winning documentary and portrait photographer, writer, and curator in New York City.
JEM COHEN PROGRAM
FILMMAKER IN PERSON!
Jem Cohen’s body of work is exceptionally multi-faceted, encompassing short films shot on Super-8mm, 16mm, and various digital formats; films and videos made with and about musicians and bands including Patti Smith, Fugazi, The Ex, R.E.M., Elliott Smith, Benjamin, and others; and fictional or hybrid features such as CHAIN (2004) and MUSEUM HOURS (2012). But one strand that he’s pursued throughout his career, and that threads through almost all of his work, is a devotion to street photography. A compulsive wanderer and filmer, Cohen is one of the great contemporary moving-image street photographers, a successor to diary filmmakers like Robert Frank and Jonas Mekas, and one who is deeply attuned to the hidden details, unique rhythms, and too-often-voiceless inhabitants of NYC and the various other cities and towns he has visited. This program comprises a selection of some of his finest works of “street cinema”, and shows how varied his work is even within that form.
LOST BOOK FOUND
1996, 37 min, Super-8mm & 16mm-to-video
“My first films were ‘street’ essays and that’s been a through line ever since. Looking back, I’ve come to some realizations. (With time, fog rolls in, but some drifts away too.) In 1990 I had the chance to meet Harry Smith and blew it. LOST BOOK FOUND, which I was already circling by then (I’d started gathering footage by ’89) was, among other things, a way of making that meeting. The film is about seeing the city through a kind of outsider taxonomy; finding a million connections, and missing a million more. That’s what street photography is. Whether trying to make sense of a city or just celebrating the impossibility of doing so, one must embrace chance. The theater of the street, its ‘sets’ and ‘actors,’ can’t and shouldn’t be controlled or effaced (not by gentrification, academicians, cops, cell phones, surveillance…).” –Jem Cohen
Plus:
NYC WEIGHTS & MEASURES 2006, 6 min, 16mm-to-digital
HELIANTHUS CORNER BLUES 2013, 3 min, digital
BURY ME NOT 2016, 9 min, digital
Total running time: ca. 60 min.
Fri, Nov 22 at 7:00.
Robert Frank
ONE HOUR / C’EST VRAI
1990, 60 min, video. © June Leaf and Robert Frank Foundation, distributed by The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.
Jonas Mekas
A WALK
1990, 60 min, video
These two hour-long, single-take videos both have their roots in Philippe Grandrieux’s French television project, “Live” (which also encompassed hour-long pieces by Robert Kramer, Stephen Dwoskin, Ken Kobland, and Grandrieux himself). Robert Frank’s contribution is an eye-opening and inspired ramble through downtown NYC, which combines verité footage of a (now largely vanished) East Village (including a glimpse of Anthology), improvisation, and scripted elements (during the seemingly spontaneous walk, the camera just happens to come across figures such as Taylor Mead, Bill Rice, Tom Jarmusch, and Peter Orlovsky).
Jonas Mekas created an hour-long work for Grandrieux’s project as well – MOB OF ANGELS: A BAPTISM – but was unhappy with the result and never submitted it (he later reevaluated the film and released it separately). But later that year he made another unedited hour-long video work, A WALK, which he described thusly: “On a rainy day, I have a walk through the early Soho. I begin my walk on 80 Wooster Street and continue towards the Williamsburg bridge, where, 58 minutes later, still raining, my walk ends. As I walk, occasionally I talk about what I see or I tell some totally unrelated little stories that come to my mind as I walk. This video was my early exercise in the one-shot video form.”
Fri, Nov 22 at 9:15, Sun, Nov 24 at 5:15, and Sat, Dec 21 at 6:15.
2 X NICHOLAS DOOB
A prolific and renowned documentary filmmaker, Nicholas Doob is known for his work as a cinematographer on numerous films by D.A. Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus (including TOWN BLOODY HALL, ZIGGY STARDUST AND THE SPIDERS FROM MARS, and THE WAR ROOM) and for directing or co-directing numerous award-winning films (such as DOWN FROM THE MOUNTAIN, A BOY’S LIFE, and AL FRANKEN: GOD SPOKE). Before launching his professional career, Doob studied at Yale (with Murray Lerner, among others), and the Yale Film Center recently preserved several of the extraordinary short films he made during that time, including two remarkable works of street photography, 42ND STREET MOVIE and STREET MUSIC.
Nicholas Doob
STREET MUSIC
1979, 57 min, 16mm. Print courtesy of the Yale Film Archive.
STREET MUSIC presents performances by 19 street musicians in seven cities across the U.S. The film features singers, guitarists, drummers, dancers, and others, including street performance legends like Porkchop, Brother Blue, the Automatic Human Jukebox, and Jimmy Davis. From San Francisco to New York, and Chicago to New Orleans, the film captures a cross-section of Americans filled with raw talent, showmanship, and hustle, and presents a time capsule of the fashion, architecture, and culture of the 1970s.
Preceded by:
Nicholas Doob
42ND ST MOVIE
1969, 18 min, 16mm. Print courtesy of the Yale Film Archive.
42ND ST MOVIE begins with a shot of the sun setting over the Hudson River in New York City, and goes on to examine the nighttime street life found in the block of 42nd Street between Seventh and Eighth Avenues. As Doob describes it, “That block was fairly notorious at that time, with pornographic bookstores and theaters, peep-shows, and prostitution. It was also a kind of magnet for exotic personalities, and a visually interesting location.”
Total running time: ca. 85 min.
Sat, Nov 23 at 4:30 and Sat, Nov 30 at 6:00.
William H. Whyte
THE SOCIAL LIFE OF SMALL URBAN SPACES
1980, 58 min, 16mm-to-digital
This witty and original film – the filmic counterpart to Whyte’s seminal book of the same name – is about the open spaces of cities and why some of them work for people while others don’t. Beginning at New York’s Seagram Plaza, one of the most used open areas in the city, the film proceeds to analyze why this space is so popular and how other urban oases, both in New York and elsewhere, measure up. Based on direct observation of what people actually do, the film presents a remarkably engaging and informative tour of the urban landscape and looks at how it can be made more hospitable to those who live in it.
“William Whyte is a legendary people watcher who likes to study the subtle ways public space is used. I think about this film constantly whenever I’m out shooting.” –John Wilson
Followed by:
John Wilson THE ROAD TO MAGNASANTI 2017, 15 min, digital
Though his sensibility and tone set his work decidedly apart from more conventional, “classical” street photography, John Wilson – who has been making utterly unique short videos for many years now, but achieved a new level of recognition thanks to the HBO series HOW TO WITH JOHN WILSON – is nothing if not a street photographer, and one of the most perceptive and witty we have. Few filmmakers have captured the vitality and absurdity of NYC street life as acutely as he has, and THE ROAD TO MAGNASANTI is his typically trenchant take on the changing physical, cultural, and economic landscape of the city.
John Smith THE GIRL CHEWING GUM 1976, 12 min, 16mm
“In THE GIRL CHEWING GUM a commanding voice over appears to direct the action in a busy London street. As the instructions become more absurd and fantasized, we realize that the supposed director (not the shot) is fictional…” –A.L. Rees
Total running time: ca. 90 min.
Sat, Nov 23 at 6:45 and Fri, Nov 29 at 7:00.
FILMMAKER IN PERSON!
Tom Jarmusch
SOMETIMES CITY
2011, 80 min, digital
A remarkably gritty, rough-hewn, and deeply personal video portrait of Cleveland, SOMETIMES CITY features Clevelanders speaking about their hometown, its problems, and the things they like. Conceived as a mixture of documentary, home movie, personal memoir, and fiction, it obliquely suggests Cleveland’s history, its neighborhoods and landscape, and the huge heart of the people who inhabit it. Its accumulation of unspectacular filmed encounters gradually forms an incredibly revealing mosaic of a deeply troubled urban community, making SOMETIMES CITY something of a lo-fi, minimalist version of THE WIRE.
Sun, Nov 24 at 8:00.
Djamil Beloucif
LE COIN DES VAURIENS
2021, 270 min, DCP
For this bold, epic-length experiment in “automatic” street photography, filmmaker Djamil Beloucif installed a digital camera in the center of Algiers, alongside a note instructing passersby how to start recording. The result finds a cross-section of Algiers residents interacting with the camera in various ways, performing for the camera, philosophizing, and expressing their thoughts on life, culture, politics, sports, city life, and much, much more. Lasting four-and-a-half hours, LE COIN DES VAURIENS comprises a wide-ranging catalogue of individual portraits, and becomes a kind of city symphony made by the city’s residents themselves. The structure and nature of the work means that it can be seen as a whole, or in parts – we encourage audiences to come and go during the course of the screening.
Sun, Dec 22 at 5:00.
PLUS:
Kamal Aljafari
AN UNUSUAL SUMMER
2020, 80 min, DCP
Sun, Nov 10 at 6:15.
[This film is screening as part of a retrospective devoted to Kamal Aljafari’s work.]
Jem Cohen
BURIED IN LIGHT (CENTRAL AND EASTERN EUROPE IN PASSING)
1994, 60 min, Super-8mm-to-digital
Tues, Dec 17 at 7:00.
[This film is screening as part of a Robert Frank-themed film series.]
