Anthology Film Archives

Film Screenings / Programs / Retrospectives

WEEGEE'S CAMERA MAGIC

January 31 – February 6

January 31-February 6, 2025

To celebrate Anthology’s brand-new preservations of five short films by the legendary photographer Weegee, and on the occasion of the International Center of Photography’s exhibition, “Weegee: Society of the Spectacle”, Anthology and ICP co-present the film series, “Weegee’s Camera Magic”. This program brings together the newly-preserved films, his most famous moving-image work WEEGEE’S NEW YORK, and a selection of other films that Weegee participated in, as actor, consultant, special effects designer, or set photographer.

Arthur Fellig (1899-1968), known to the world as “Weegee”, was among the most unusual of American photographers and artists. Notorious for his crime photography, Weegee spent the 1930s and 40s depicting the seedy underbelly of New York City, generating vivid, gut-wrenching, and frankly sensational images of crime scenes, police activity, and the down-and-out. Exposed to a wide audience through his legendary photo book, “Naked City”, these images flew in the face of the comparatively staid “art photography” of the time. As Weegee’s fame grew, he increasingly turned his attention on Hollywood, documenting the celebrities, premiere events, and larger ecology of the movie industry, while also indulging his interest in developing expressionistically surreal camera techniques to create bizarrely manipulated images of reality. By the 1950s he had begun utilizing these techniques within his burgeoning interest in 16mm cinematography. While Weegee’s body of photographic work has long been celebrated, his 16mm experimental films of the 1940s, 50s, and 60s are virtually unknown – a situation that’s poised to change thanks to our new preservations.

On view at ICP from January 23-May 5, 2025, “Weegee: Society of the Spectacle” aims to reconcile the two sides of Weegee through an investigation of his focus, throughout his career, on a critique of 20th century popular culture and its insatiable appetite for spectacle. The exhibition is curated by Clément Chéroux, Director of the Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson (FHCB), Paris, in collaboration with the Weegee Archive at the International Center of Photography (ICP), New York. For more info visit: https://www.icp.org/exhibitions/weegee-society-of-the-spectacle 

Special thanks to Jacque Donaldson Bailey, Izzy Dow, Sara Ickow, and Marley Trigg Stewart (ICP); Scott MacDonald; Christopher George; Brian Belovarac (Janus Films); Chris Chouinard (Park Circus); Skip Elsheimer (A/V Geeks); Steven Hill & Todd Wiener (UCLA Film & Television Archive); Dave Jennings (Sony Pictures); Silas Lesnick (Flicker Alley); and Steven Morowitz (Distribpix Inc).

Upcoming Screenings

< Back to Series