11 Jun 4/10/18 Rick Prelinger

Posted at 14:02h in Lecture Series, Past Lectures by

 

Screening: LOST LANDSCAPES OF NEW YORK

Filmmaker, Media Historian and Archivist Rick Prelinger in person! Free and open to the public.
Co-presented by The DocYard

Tuesday, April 10,  7 PM – 9 PM
Location: Huntington Hall (Room 10-250), MacLaurin Building (building 10),  Map: https://whereis.mit.edu/

Since 2006, film historian and archivist Rick Prelinger has presented 22 participatory urban-history events to enthusiastic audiences in San Francisco, Detroit, Los Angeles, Oakland, and at festivals throughout the world. His new film focuses on New York City.

This found footage odyssey requires an active audience to create a live soundscape for this cinematic exploration.

LOST LANDSCAPES OF NEW YORK (HD video from film, 83 min.) mixes home movies by New Yorkers, tourists, and semi-professional cinematographers with outtakes from feature films and background “process plates” picturing granular details of New York’s cityscape. The combination of intimate moments, memories from many New York neighborhoods, and a variety of rare cinematic perspectives forms a 21st-century city symphony whose soundtrack will be provided by the audience. Viewers will be invited to comment, to ask questions and to interact with one another as the screening unfolds.

Lost Landscapes of New York spans much of the 20th century, covering daily life, work, celebration, social change, and the city’s changing streetscapes. Almost all of the footage in the film has never beforebeen shown publicly. Highlights include: the streets and people of the Lower East Side, Harlem, Brooklyn, the Bronx, and Queens; a 1930s train ride from the Bronx to Grand Central; a visit to pre-demolition Penn Station and the Lincoln Center area pre-redevelopment; street photographers in Times Square; 1931 Times Square scenes in color; Spanish Harlem in the 1960s; housing shortages and civil rights protests in 1940s Harlem; Manhattan’s exuberant neon signage; elevated trains in the 1920s and 1930s; garment strikes in the 1930s; Depression-era “Hoovervilles”; crowds at Coney Island in the 1920s; Italian Americans in Brooklyn in the 1930s; 1960s Puerto Rican community activism; and a visit to both 1939-40 and 1964-65 Worlds’ Fairs.