Concern For The City1982

Concern for the City (16mm, 30 min, sound, color, 1982)
Ultimately, all of my films are lyrical essays in cinematic form. Concern presents a scenario in
which nature promises to overwhelm and engulf the city—the opposite of the conventional
environmentalist take in which an out-of-control urbanized mankind ultimately poisons and lays
to waste his environment. The photography took place from 1979 through 1982, with a
synthesized soundtrack by electronic music composer Klaus Schulze. In the film, I sought to
portray New York as much as possible as a living organism, in which humankind and his works
are a small factor within a much larger and more powerful ecology.
“Concern for the City is a memorable film. A portrait of New York City in the tradition of
Ruttman’s Berlin, Symphony of a City, Vertov’s Man with a Movie Camera, and Francis
Thompson’s N.Y., N.Y….full of stunning and remarkable moments.…”
–Scott MacDonald, writer, film historian
“The sense of place that emerges from the film evokes the island as the early Dutch settlers must
have encountered its material presence within an envelope of mist and light.”
–Patrick Clancy, writer, multimedia artist
“A number of filmmakers, from Peter Hutton and Godfrey Reggio to Peter von Ziegesar and Jem
Cohen, seek to recast the city as an ecosystem by re-emphasizing or reimagining the city as part
of nature and vice versa…. By cinematically accelerating the passage of time von Ziegesar
defamiliarizes the city and reasserts an ecological agency. Quickly shifting patterns of cloud
shadows impart a sense of movement… static architecture seems to undulate... flocking pigeons
distract the viewer’s focus from recognizable urban structures. The film's final shot (frames) the
Statue of Liberty from the shore of New Jersey’s Liberty State Park, with its back turned to the
camera. An abrupt tilt downwards reveals driftwood and garbage…”
– Cortland Rankin, 2016, “Two Tales of a City: New York’s Cinemas of Crisis and Reappropriation."