Jem Cohen

REM: This Film Is On

Jim McKay, Jeff Preiss

Michael Stipe, Mike Mills

This 50-minute release features promotional videos to the band's four singles from Out of Time ('Losing My Religion', 'Shiny Happy People', 'Near Wild Heaven' and 'Radio Song') in addition to videos to the album tracks 'Low', 'Belong', 'Half A World Away' and 'Country Feedback'; an acoustic performance of 'Losing My Religion' from The Late Show; and a live acoustic performance of 'Love Is All Around' from MTV Unplugged. Also included is 'Endgame', an instrumental track, played over the feature's credits; and several avant-garde clips, ranging from ten seconds to one minute, playing in between each song. This incidental footage was directed by Michael Stipe.

Lucky Three: An Elliott Smith Portrait

Jem Cohen

Elliott Smith

Described as "a cross between a video and a documentary, but actually being neither of the two", singer/songwriter Elliott Smith plays three acoustic songs in this Jem Cohen-directed short film.

Instrument

Jem Cohen

Ian MacKaye, Brendan Canty

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.

Lost Book Found

Jem Cohen

The result of over five years of Super-8 and 16mm filming on New York City streets, Lost Book Found melds documentary and narrative into a complex meditation on city life. The piece revolves around a mysterious notebook filled with obsessive listings of places, objects, and incidents. These listings serve as the key to a hidden city: a city of unconsidered geographies and layered artifacts—the relics of low-level capitalism and the debris of countless forgotten narratives. The project stems from the filmmaker's first job in New York—working as a pushcart vendor on Canal Street. As usual, Cohen shot in hundreds of locations using unobtrusive equipment and generally without any crew. Influenced by the work of Walter Benjamin.

Buried in Light

Jem 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.

NYC Weights and Measures

Jem Cohen

"Like a floating, drifting piece of ticker tape, the film makes its way across boroughs and time to explore New York City's many moods, from loud and relentless to grave and dreamy."

Building a Broken Mousetrap

Jem Cohen

A film by Jem Cohen

Amber City

Jem Cohen

A portrait of an unnamed city in Italy. Sidestepping the tourist attractions that make the city famous, the film/video posits an almost-imaginary place that draws closer to the reality of its inhabitants. Using a voiceover narration that collages direct observation, literary texts, historical fact, local folklore, and a bit of sheer fabrication, the film/video melds documentary and narrative, past and present. Visuals range from verite street footage, to formal portraits of residents, to an unusual type of time lapse cinematography that allows filming in the low-intensity light of night landscapes and museum interiors. Made in collaboration with local residents and institutions, Amber City reflects on the "in-betweeness" of places whose historical and geographical location renders their reality strangely invisible.

Evening's Civil Twilight in Empires of Tin

Jem Cohen

Vic Chesnutt, Thierry Amar

This surreal art-movie/live-performance hybrid is comprised of New York filmmaker Jem Cohen's original 16mm and DV movie footage combined with concert clips of Vic Chesnutt and members of Silver Mt. Zion, among others.

This Is a History of New York

Jem Cohen

A history of New York City from Prehistoric times through the Space Age, composed entirely from documentary street footage.

Benjamin Smoke

Peter Sillen, Jem Cohen

Benjamin Dickerson, Patti Smith

Benjamin Smoke is the highly acclaimed documentary by directors Jem Cohen and Peter Sillen on legendary underground musician Benjamin Smoke. Benjamin Smoke follows the crooked path of this fringe-dweller, speed-freak, occasional drag-queen and all-around renegade living in the hidden Atlanta neighborhood called “Cabbagetown,” and playing with his band Smoke.

Chain

Jem Cohen

Miho Nikaido, Mira Billotte

In Chain, actual malls, theme parks, hotels and corporate centers worldwide are joined into a monolithic “superlandscape” that shapes and circumscribes the lives of two women. One is a businesswoman researching the international theme park industry for her company. The other is a young drifter, illegally living and occasionally working in a shopping mall.

Little Flags

Jem Cohen

Cohen shot Little Flags in black and white on the streets of lower Manhattan during an early-’90s military ticker-tape parade and edited the footage years later. The crowd noises fade and Cohen shows the litter flooding the streets as the urban location looks progressively more ghostly and distant from the present. Everyone loves a parade—except for the dead.

Just Hold Still

Jem Cohen

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.

Drink Deep

Jem Cohen

Drink Deep is a lyrical vision of friendship, hidden secrets, and desires. Cohen uses several types of film image to add texture to the layered composition. Beautiful shades of grey, silver, black and blue echo the water, reminiscent of early photography and silverprints. Cohen says, "The piece was constructed primarily from footage I’d shot of skinnydippers at swimming holes in Georgia and rural Pennsylvania. It’s about water and memory and stories just submerged. It is also, in part, a response to thinking about censorship. I would say that Drink Deep is both unabashedly and deceptively romantic. Surface, flow, and undertow. What looks like paradise is always paradise lost."

Bury Me Not

Jem Cohen

This film is closely related to my last featurelength project, COUNTING. I take the temperature of a neighborhood. In this case, the place is my New York. I think about street life and its threatened demise – a death ushered in as Big Money relentlessly re-makes cities in ever more categorical ways. I think with the camera, on the move, in fragments. The light seen on a woman’s face in Chapter 3 of COUNTING is blocked by the luxury condo that grows and joins many nearby, as Brooklyn succumbs to gentrification (evinced by a beleaguered postOccupy Wall Street demonstration). Here also is the ever worried, ever renewed hum of the Manhattan crowds which continue to enthrall me. What stays, what gets buried? (Jem Cohen, Viennale 2016)