Twenty five years ago, Jem Cohen completed Lost Book Found, a semi-fictional diary film that draws from his experience as a pushcart vendor in lower Manhattan. The work is crafted from what such a vendor might have seen and heard: bits of paper and plastic swirling ghostlike in eddies of wind; weathered storefronts; window displays crowded with tchotchkes; enigmatic notes taped to streetlights; disassociated recordings of sales pitches, passing conversations, and the sounds of machines at work; unlovely aggregations of cardboard; evening skylines glowing in fog.Read More »
Jem Cohen
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Jem Cohen – Lost Book Found (1996)
Jem Cohen1991-2000DocumentaryShort FilmUSA -
Jem Cohen – Instrument: Ten Years with the Band Fugazi (1999)
USA1991-2000DocumentaryJem CohenPerformanceQuote:
Instrument is a documentary film directed by Jem Cohen about the band Fugazi. Cohen’s relationship with band member Ian MacKaye extends back to the 1970s when the two met in high school in Washington, D.C.. The film takes its title from the Fugazi song of the same name, from their 1993 album, In on the Kill Taker.
Editing of the film was done by both Cohen and the members of the band over the course of five years. It was shot from 1987 through 1998 on super 8, 16mm and video and is composed mainly of footage of concerts, interviews with the band members, practices, tours and time spent in the studio recording their 1995 album, Red Medicine.
The film also includes portraits of fans as well as interviews with them at various Fugazi shows around the United States throughout the years.Read More » -
Jem Cohen – Counting (2015)
2011-2020DocumentaryJem CohenUSASynopsis:
Fifteen distinct but interconnected chapters, shot in locations from Russia to New York City to Istanbul. Together, these build to a reckoning at the intersection of city symphony, diary, and essay film. Perhaps the most personal of Cohen’s documentary works, COUNTING measures street life, light, and time, noting not only surveillance and over-development but resistance and its phantoms as manifested in music, animals and everyday magic.Read More » -
Jem Cohen – Buried in Light (1994)
1991-2000ArthouseDocumentaryItalyJem Cohen“A meditation on history, memory, and change in Central and Eastern Europe, Buried in Light is a non-narrative journey, a cinematic collage. Cohen’s “search for images” began at a time of extraordinary flux, as the Berlin Wall was dismantled—opening borders yet ushering in a nascent wave of consumer capitalism. What he saw struck him as a profound paradox: the moment Eastern Europe was revealed was simultaneously the moment it was hidden by the blinding light of commercialism. Cohen’s images are neither the tourist’s roster of picturesque vistas and monuments, nor the mass media’s definitive catalog of dramatic moments. Instead, he focuses on details, ordinary objects, and forgotten places—filming daily life as seen on the street.”
—Linda Dubler, Art at the Edge (Atlanta: High Museum of Art)Read More » -
Jem Cohen – This Is a History of New York (1987)
1951-1960ArthouseDocumentaryJem CohenUSAOne of Jem Cohens first films (his third), conducted on Super 8 camera in 1987-88, consisting of impressionistic shots of urban development and decay. An impressive short piece (not least considering its year of production!) pointing ahead to his masterful ‘Lost book found’.Read More »
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Jem Cohen – Just Hold Still (1989)
1981-1990ArthouseExperimentalJem CohenUSAQuote:
In his New York City landscape, Cohen finds inspiration in disturbance. Looking to life for rhythm and to architecture for state of mind, he locates simple mysteries. Just Hold Still is comprised of an interconnected series of short works and collaborations that explore the gray area between documentary, narrative, and experimental genres.The first part concerns a personal, poetic approach to narrative and includes 4:44 (From Her House Home), Never Change (with Blake Nelson), Love Teller (with Ben Katchor), and Light Years. The second part involves hybridized use of verité footage and the confrontation of documentary concerns with the music video format and includes Selected City Films, Glue Man (with Ian MacKaye), and Talk about the Passion (with R.E.M). The work can be considered as a whole, or each piece in the project can be viewed (and rented) as a separate entity.Read More »