UnionDocs

UnionDocs welcomes back the Brooklyn Filmmakers Collective for their regular meetings and critiques, starting next week.

Exiting my apartment building, the city greets me –  by the sounds of traffic, heels on concrete, screeching bus brakes, and by the blank stares of nameless faces with souls locked behind stopped-down irises.  I, also wearing my ‘stranger face’, dash forward into the...

The introduction sequences of both Los Sures (LS) and Metropolitan Ave. (MA) start with a aerial reference shot of Williamsburg looking towards the East River and Manhattan with a voice over narration which state the intent of the film. In the case of LS the stated intent is a portrait. In MA the...

Venkatesh and Andersen both offer up lengthy critiques of myths that Hollywood filmmakers and sociologists build around cities that they seek to portray or understand. However, in many ways I feel like our roles as documentarians can lead us to the same traps that the critiqued subjects of the...

From the first meeting. Front: Annie Berman, Laura Mayer, Daniel Terna, Emma Brenner-Malin, Joshua Gen Solondz,Laurie Sumiye. Middle: Christopher Allen, Ashley Panzera, Andrew Parsons, Rosa White, Kara Oehler, Stephanie Chang Back: Matthew Yoka, Michael Kugler, Will Martin,  Steve...

Yesterday, we didn’t get to discussing two relevant references to our conversation around database documentary. One database-driven approach that might be relevant to our project is the repeated recording of the same location over time. This method is demonstrated in this clip from Smoke...

“The speaker produces an utterance by stringing together the elements, one after another, in a linear sequence.” The private spaces of a city-the spaces inhabited by lovers- act as the paradigm of a city. As Saussure puts it, “the units which have something in common are...

There is so much to say about both of these films, but to start, I wanted to talk about this image of birds perched above the city caught flying off above it that occurs in the beginning of both films (Los Sures – the opening shot, Man with a Movie camera- 9 minutes in,...

1. I chose this still because it represents survival. It is here that we, the viewer, recognize the struggle to live and make ends meet in Los Sures.