UnionDocs Center for Documentary Art

The “City Symphony” is not a coherent cinematic tradition, but a syncretic notion cradled at the intersection of three films made between 1926 and 1929: Alberto Cavalcanti’s Rien que les heures (1926), Walter Ruttmann’s Berlin: Symphony of a Metropolis (1927), and Dziga Vertov’s Man...

Fifty People, One Question is a simple project with surprising results. We go to a place, ask fifty people the same question and film their responses.The project started in New Orleans, LA and received such a warm response that we decided to do it again in New York City. Now we’re...

The morning of Saturday, Oct. 3 I dusted off my weathered Panasonic DVX100 out and headed off for Prospect Heights for my second round of shooting for the City Symphony assignment, again adhering to the rules set out for me: stick to Prospect Heights during the hours of 10 am to 1 pm. I stayed...

My first assignment for the Collaborative program was modeled after the City Symphony genre, which largely consists of silent or scored films shot of city life during the 1920s. From what I understand, these films were among the first to string together a rough narrative comprised of non-staged...