EUGENE, Ore. -- (March 29, 2017) – The Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art continues this year’s Schnitzer Cinema “In The Street” series on Wednesday, April 12, at 7 p.m. with “Same Streets, Different Worlds” featuring a Skype Q&A with filmmaker Jem Cohen. Two short street films, “NYC Weights and Measures” and “Little Flags,” along with a selection of episodes from “Gravity Hills Newsreels” on Occupy Wall Street will be screened. Schnitzer Cinema is programmed by Richard Herskowitz, JSMA curator of media arts. The program is free and includes refreshments.
Jem Cohen’s “Gravity Hill Newsreels” poetically documented the Occupy Wall Street movement. They demonstrated how the protestors transformed the urban landscape, taking once unremarkable “privately owned public spaces” and transforming them into truly public “agoras” — vibrant, unpredictable, open-air gatherings that cut across socioeconomic barriers and made for some of the liveliest “street theater” New York City had ever seen.
In Cohen’s 5.5 minute long “NYC Weights and Measures” (2005), he composes an array of New York City scenes from a ticker-tape parade that combines a lyrical cacophony of noise and bustle which balances the tranquil imagery of the city’s spaces. Cohen filmed “NYC Weights and Measures” during a time where national security concerns increasingly limited what could and could not be photographed in New York and other cities.
Cohen shot “Little Flags” (2000, 6.5 minutes) in black and white on the streets of lower Manhattan during an early-’90s military ticker-tape parade. The crowd noises fade and Cohen shows the litter flooding the streets as the urban location looks progressively more ghostly and distant from the present.
“I just like to roam and shoot with the guiding principle being to look and to listen,” says Cohen on his website. “Don’t feel you have to pre-decide what you’re making; let the world itself tell you what you’re making.”
Jem Alan Cohen is a New York based American filmmaker known for his sociopolitical and artistic portrayal of urban America, combining multiple media formats and collaboration with musicians. His films and installations often navigate the grey area between documentary, narrative, and experimental genres. His work is in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, The Whitney Museum of American Art and Melbourne’s Screen Gallery.
Schnitzer Cinema is sponsored by UO's Office of Academic Affairs.
About the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art
The University of Oregon's Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art is a premier Pacific Northwest museum for exhibitions and collections of historic and contemporary art. The mission of the museum is to enhance the University of Oregon’s academic mission and to further the appreciation and enjoyment of the visual arts for the general public. The JSMA features significant collections galleries devoted to art from China, Japan, Korea, Europe, and the Americas as well as changing special exhibition galleries. The JSMA is one of seven museums—and the only academic art museum-- in Oregon accredited by the American Alliance of Museums.
The Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art is located on the University of Oregon campus at 1430 Johnson Lane. Museum hours are 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. Wednesdays, and 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Thursdays through Sundays. Admission is $5 for adults and $3 for senior citizens. Free admission is given to ages 18 and under, JSMA members, college students with ID, and University of Oregon faculty, staff and students. For information, contact the JSMA, 541-346-3027.
About the University of Oregon
The University of Oregon is among the 108 institutions chosen from 4,633 U.S. universities for top-tier designation of "Very High Research Activity" in the 2010 Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education. The UO also is one of two Pacific Northwest members of the Association of American Universities.
Contact: Debbie Williamson Smith, 541-346-0942, debbiews@uoregon.edu
Links: Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art, http://jsma.uoregon.edu
