DOMINIC ANGERAME - CITYSCAPES

Since the 1960s, the American filmmaker, theorist, and avant-garde activist (i.e., former director of Canyon Cinema) has been working in a form that is both documentary and poetic. Working primarily in the tradition of city symphony films (MANHATTA; BERLIN: SYMPHONY OF A GREAT CITY; LISBOA, CRÓNICA ANEDÓTICA; and THE MAN WIH THE MOVIE CAMERA), Angerame’s city films show urban deconstruction and cinematic construction as two sides of the same coin, as de-construction, even. The ghostly calm that hovers over PREMONITIONS (1995) and the intense interest in construction details are reminiscent of the austere architectural films of Heinz Emigholz.

Angerame’s work searches for unfamiliar views of seemingly familiar things: cities, landscapes, faces, bodies. The filmmaker’s desire is to make everyday images unfamiliar, to learn to see them fresh and to estrange them from our senses. Angerame stylizes his urban landscapes into half-abstract, extremely painterly compositions; his films are often layered as collages through double and triple exposures.