(The 59th San Francisco International Film Festival ran April 21-May 5.)
Counting is a difficult film to pin down. But that’s precisely what makes it so engaging. All films are art to some extent (for better or worse). But typically, the narrative is the main focus. In Jem Cohen’s latest film, the art is the focus, made all the more so by the lack of narrative and the frequently incongruent audio. Shot primarily in New York City, Moscow, Istanbul, and Sharja, Counting often feels like a travel diary wherein the traveler is the camera itself and Cohen is a ghost who pops up from time to time.
The film is broken into 15 parts, each beginning with a title and ending with the date and city in which the footage was shot. Sometimes the segment has a postscript such as in part 2: “A Day is Long”… “But a lifetime is short.” The titles are a mantra – something on which to ruminate or puzzle over during the segment. You begin to notice recurring motifs such as travel (planes, trains and automobiles) – but always with the camera trained out the window to catch the passing scenery; frequent shots of new construction contrast with neglected buildings and sidewalks; people hustle and bustle through the streets, passing static vagrants and paying them no mind; nature pushes through concrete, fighting for the right to exist; cats abound…
Read the rest at Hammer to Nail!
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