City

The performance artist Stephen Varble spent the last five years of his life working on an epic, unfinished performance-turned-video titled Journey to the Sun (1978-1983). Only partially complete and under constant revision, this complex work combined Varble’s history of making costumes for performances with his fantastic stories involving metamorphosis and martyrdom. In 1982, Varble decided to make a “prelude” to Journey to the Sun, combining existing footage with new video taken in Riverside Park in New York City.

A commissioned portait of Pamplona, a small city in the North of Spain, shot and edited there in under 2 weeks. The film is a humble set of observations of place, people, atmospheres, and local rituals. (It is also a tribute to the art of film projection). As there is a large presence in the town of the conservative religious order, Opus Dei, which translates to 'Work of God,' I chose to name my film, Works of Light and Man.

-- Jem Cohen

This project started with an email from a stranger in 2017. The sender was the widower of the late artist Tania and he invited the filmmaker to look at her “archive.” Tania was born to Jewish parents in Poland in 1920. The family moved to Paris in the 1930s, but during the WWII they fed to Montreal, then emigrated to New York. Tania eventually became an artist. While facing many hurdles as a female artist in the 1960s and 70s, Tania vigorously created a wide range of artworks, not only paintings and three-dimensional pieces, but also public art projects.

There are approximately 30,000 Filipino guest workers living within the State of Israel. The majority are female and work as caregivers for the elderly or sick. In Tel Aviv they live in shanty town conditions around the central bus station also known as the ‘Tachana Mercazit’. On Saturdays, buses in the Tachana do not work, and this giant modernist building is occupied by guest workers, who spend their time shopping, partying and socializing in bars, clubs and shops within the compound. Beauty contests are very popular among Filipinos both at home and abroad.

Shot over one day, this program records the events and protests in Washington DC on May Day, 1971. This was the day when one of the most disruptive actions of the Vietnam War era occurred in Washington, DC, when thousands of anti-war activists tried to shut down the Federal government in protest at the War.

A feel for the mood in the city is gained during the first half of the video with shots of the city from a moving car in traffic. Protestors, city residents, and police are captured on tape, along with exciting and moving shots of the day's actions and arrests.

During February and March of 2016, Danspace Project presented Platform, a month long curated program for which Eiko's solo project, A Body in Places, was the focus. At the center of the Platform's dense programs were Eiko's daily solos. Eiko presented 21 performances of A Body in Places in different locations at different times of day and night. In A Body in the East Village, both the camera and the gaze of the audience members closely follow three of these intimate and spontaneous performances.

Shot in Naples, Vienna, and New York, Some Chance Operations explores the notion of an archival form, in this instance film, as an unstable memory receptacle that can vanish. History and how it is made is meditated upon as one of many chance operations. The filmmaker Elvira Notari, who had a film production company in Naples from 1906 to 1930, plays a significant role as an impetus for Some Chance Operations. Despite the fact that she was a prolific filmmaker, producing over sixty feature films, only three remain intact.

The Nothing That Is stems from the environment of our streets, both the “virtual” and “other reality” which inhabits them.

...just what it says, it's about the street. 

In a city post-apocalypse, young men communicate only through smart devices. They make home out of urban debris. They can’t speak to each other, but are still able to dream.

This first "Frieda" collaboration between performance artists Barbara Lipp and Tom Koden and video artist Tom Rubnitz chronicles Frieda's rise from assembly-line worker in a box factory to singing superstar. Featuring rock-bottom production values and a sound track which includes the Brady Bunch kids' tune "Gonna Find a Rainbow".

Event Fission is an outdoor performance on the Hudson River landfill, produced by Creative Time. Eiko & Koma danced with a huge white flag billowing on top of a sand dune as the audience watched from below. The white flag was used to symbolically attack the newly developed downtown buildings. On a lower level of the landfill, to which Eiko & Koma tumbled down, there were fires on four corners of the performing area. At the end of the performance of 50 minutes, Eiko & Koma were swallowed into a deep hole they had dug and hid, disappearing with a blast of sand.