The films shown today at noon at the
SFMOMA were very appealing. The first one was filmed in New York in 1921 by Charles Sheeler and Paul Strand and though grainy, showed impressive urban views of architecture. The most stunning was by
Laszlo Moholy-Nagy. Well preserved, the film depicted Berlin in 1931 and focused less on the urbanism and more on the urbane. Those first two films were silent and while the second films were meant to have sound, they were not able to make it work, which wasn't much of a loss. I rather enjoyed the silence. Rudy Burckhardt's 1955 film showed a large industrial brick building under the Brooklyn Bridge being taken down, literally brick by brick. And the final film was on San Franicsco in 1968 and while I was looking forward to some hippie footage set to Pink Floyd, it was actually rather jarring with the images blurred and sped up to the point that it was a little unnerving.
