Lost Book Found   00:37:00 1996
The result of over five years of Super-8 and 16mm filming on New York City streets, Lost Book Found melds documentary and narrative into a complex meditation on city life. The piece revolves around a mysterious notebook filled with obsessive listings of places, objects, and incidents. These listings serve as the key to a hidden city: a city of unconsidered geographies and layered artifacts—the relics of low-level capitalism and the debris of countless forgotten narratives. The project stems from the filmmaker's first job in New York—working as a pushcart vendor on Canal Street. As usual, Cohen shot in hundreds of locations using unobtrusive equipment and generally without any crew. Influenced by the work of Walter Benjamin, Cohen created "an archive of undirected shots and sounds, then set out to explore the boundary" between genres. During the process, Cohen said, "I found connections between the street vendor, Benjamin's 'flaneur', and my own work as an observer and collector of ephemeral street life." "Its beauty is quite ineffable. It's the sort of visual experience that transforms everything seen by the viewer for several hours afterward. . . What it actually does is capture the subconscious of the city itself, the dream state of the whole past existing in simultaneous disarray." —Luc Sante, Low Life and Evidence	Biography of Jem Cohen Locarno International Film Festival, 1st Prize Video Competition Cineastes du Present 1996 Bonn Videonale, 1996 Titles by Jem Cohen: Amber City Anne Truitt: Working Black Hole Radio Blessed Are the Dreams of Men Blood Orange Sky Building A Broken Mousetrap Buried in Light (Central and Eastern Europe in Passing) Chain Drink Deep Half the Battle Instrument Just Hold Still Little Flags Long for the City Lost Book Found Lucky Three Music Works Night Scene New York NYC Weights and Measures One Bright Day The Passage Clock: For Walter Benjamin Spirit This is a History of New York Work by Jem Cohen also appears on: Anthology: Jem Cohen: Early Works