Films by Mark Street to Screen at Millennium Film Workshop
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THE OFFICIAL FLYER FOR “STREET LIFE: THE PERSONAL CINEMA OF MARK STREET.” SOURCE: MILLENNIUM FILM WORKSHOP.
On Saturday, September 23rd, 2023, at 7:30pm, six recent observational films by Mark Street will play at the Millennium Film Workshop in the program Street Life: The Personal Cinema of Mark Street. The program includes two films made in 2022 — THE GRAIN OF BELFAST and A BETTER RELATIONSHIP WITH THE UNKNOWN — and four films made earlier this year: CLEAR ICE FERN, A SONG FOR SOME REASON, MAY 12, 2022; and LONG AGO AND FAR AWAY. Street will be in attendance with his partner, filmmaker Lynne Sachs.
As noted in Millennium’s program notes:
For many years Mark Street has been making small, observational films of the details and energies of public spaces in urban settings. City blocks, parking spaces, and storefronts (and the people who bustle on by them) become abstractions as viewed in reflected rain or through the scratched glass of a bus stop enclosure. These city spaces identify a place but carry the mark of time, and are not divorceable from the moment of their making. The works presented in this program are all recent works, made since the pandemic and its associated impositions of social closure and eventual re-opening. During this period, many of us who were stranded, homebound in urban places, found the types of daily walks recognizable in these films to be a rare avenue of escape and source of non-digitially-mediated stimulation. First from his home in New York, Street's restless camera wanders as soon as it is able to Paris, Belfast, and Glasgow as well, seeking visual rhyme and reason between these places and revealing, unassuming detail by unassuming detail, specific political contexts that separate and unite them. Where art practice and legacy is often spoken of as humankind crassly leaving a mark on this much-marked planet, these streets have instead marked Street, whose camera functions not as a pen but as a foil, reflecting the city (cities) back on itself.
Street and Sachs are both longtime friends of Gartenberg Media Enterprises. GME President Jon Gartenberg curated numerous films by Street — including FULTON FISH MARKET, A YEAR, and ROCKAWAY — while working as a programmer at the Tribeca Film Festival from 2003 to 2014. Gartenberg later joined Street on a day of filming in New York City, as part of an “experiential” prize won at an auction at the Film-Makers’ Cooperative. The resulting 16mm work — which Street entitled CITY WALK — is a unique, one-of-a-kind item in GME’s archive of experimental filmmakers’ work. Gartenberg once remarked of Street’s work: “The globe is Mark Street’s cinematic canvas, onto which he impresses shimmering reflections and lyric montage sequences.”
A FRAME FROM MARK STREET’S FILM CITY WALK, MADE ON A WALK THROUGH NEW YORK CITY WITH JON GARTENBERG.
This photograph, signed by Street and Sachs, is part of GME’s collection of artwork related to experimental filmmakers’ cinematic creations, and how art is as much about the creative process as it is about the final product.
Visit Millennium Film Workshop’s website now to RSVP for this unique showcase of recent Mark Street films!