Public Domain (2007)

For more than thirty years, Jim Jennings has worked as a film maker in the city of New York, which can be regarded as his muse. The obvious step is to regard his observations of the city and its inhabitants as urban portraits, but the films are too subtle for that. Often they were shot spontaneously in a single location, street or district, but beyond the deceptive simplicity is another way of looking (and filming) that in a certain sense seems to be torn free of reality. Is not the city itself that is seen through the camera, but the light that the city reflects: filtered and purified and put on 16mm film. A stream of light and dark areas, shifting and mirrored surfaces and peep holes, filled with details and rhythm, and often edited in the camera. That the films have no sound amplifies the feeling of rootlessness. Yet the energy of the city is tangible and occasionally audible, like an imaginary soundtrack.