Counting

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Aug 29 - Sep 01, 2015

(Jem Cohen, United States, 2015, DCP, 111 min)

 Seattle premiere

Jem Cohen’s prodigious filmography of 70 films only grows stronger with his latest creation: Counting. In the style of his previous works, this film lives at the edge of the art form. The edits are instinctive, the juxtapositions of subject matter, abstract. The imagery alternates between careful composition and impressionistic snapshots. Train windows, steamed over. Construction workers silhouetted against the sun. Thorny bushes straining to escape an empty lot in New York. Cohen travelled the world for footage, capturing Moscow, Istanbul, Porto, St. Petersburg, before returning to his home in New York. Filming without a crew, Cohen turned his unique eye for the everyday upon the great cities of the world, and their occupants. 

The film that resulted is a stream of lyrical abstractions, toying with the visual and aural music of everyday life that we city dwellers have been deafened to.
 
Counting also pays sincere tribute to Chris Marker, a close friend of Cohen’s. While indisputably Cohen’s own film, it stands as a tribute to their friendship, and Marker’s influence on the essay film format.
 
 
 
Counting, like all Cohen’s work, glows with bruised lyricism. - The Guardian
 
This is the kind of contemplative cinematheque piece that washes pleasurably over you - The Hollywood Reporter

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