Institute History
Description
Known for decades as a visual poet, filmmaker Jem Cohen has captured various corners of the world with a perceptive eye. Often filming by himself, Cohen takes a camera (16mm film, and more recently, video) and walks on the street like a modern-day Walker Evans, capturing images of people and landscapes in our smallest moments—everyday faces, vacant street corners, trinkets in windows, all the things we might see sitting on the bus and wish we could see again in a film. Though the vivid images and natural sounds in his films are usually of the outside world, we learn a lot about ourselves: our loves, our fears, and our dreams.
Cohen’s newest feature takes place in Southend-on-Sea, a town along England’s Thames estuary that lives by the tide. We see the beautiful mud, follow the birds, and look at the old buildings that radiate so much history. Along the way, we also meet many citizens while learning about prize-winning Indian curries, an encyclopedic universe of hats, and a nearly lost world of proto-punk music.
Screens with MappaMundi
Through the eyes of cosmic cartographers, the viewer takes a voyage through 950 million years of Earth history and 15,000 years of cartography. This accelerated journey visualizes the change in our world—a change unnoticeable in a single lifetime.