Jim Jennings

Jennings shot the original footage (of a ride on the Staten Island Ferry) in 1983 and rediscovered it in 2013, when it was screened at the New York Film Festival’s “Views from the Avant Garde.” As is typical of Jennings’ work, the film mines every aesthetic possibility in a quotidian situation. In this case his eyes are drawn to the motion of the boat in relation to the scenery outside its windows, to the characters of individuals and their relationships to one another and the sheer, visual and emotional beauty of it all. The passengers, on their daily commute, remain unaware of the splendor Jennings sees--and makes us see. -Karen Treanor

Jim Jennings’ first 'spectral' video work Watch the Closing Doors — a continuation, yet striking variant upon the filmmaker’s unique city symphonies, this time with synch sound — partakes in the august photographic tradition of capturing commuters unaware on the New York subway. -Eric Lavallee

“Footage shot on Super 8 in Mexico in 1983. It sat in a box in a closet for 5 years or so. I came across the footage in the 90s, had it blown up to 16mm, spent a lot of time editing it, and came up with this in the end.” – Jim Jennings, Media City 2013 catalogue, p. 49

“Jackson Heights” was filmed in a Queens, New York, neighborhood, fondly called “Jai Kissan Heights” (“Long Live Krishna Heights”) by its predominantly Indian residents. The silence of the film seems ironic in that much of “Jackson Heights” was filmed in an area named “Speaker’s Corner,” where members of the public voice their religious and political opinions as they hand out leaflets to passersby.

A rapturous and observant portrait of Greenpoint, Brooklyn, that pays tribute to a working-class neighbourhood on the verge of gentrification with a boogie-woogie collage of hot colours, pealing posters, graffiti art and neon signs.

The film flips subway rushes in various directions and quick cuts to provide a whole line study of broadway (Queens) boogie-woogie that only occasionally syncopates into rhythms, while giving the wet apparitions of the metro--graffiti, rust, people's crowded, fleeting faces . . . (David Phelps)

A silent film by Jim Jennings

So part of what's so surprising about Prague Winter is that it feels so lived in, so thoroughly grounded. It's not so much that Jennings makes Prague look like Manhattan (although there are commonalities in terms of architecture and the gaps of light between it). But the film restricts itself to sights on and around the tram, which provides an uncharacteristic linearity to the film. What's more, Jennings' status as a guest observer seems to bring out a humanism in his work, as he fixates on the elderly and, implicitly, the history to which they've been subjected. The post-Communist malaise hardens into grim acceptance, and this, along with the physical traces of Prague's history as manifested in the built environment, is what fascinates Jennings here. His camera is tender and unobtrusive, as you would expect from a filmmaker of his sensitivity.

Filmed in New York's Garment District, Fashion Avenue uses mirrors to reflect something more beautiful than the world of glamour: the everyday lives of working people. The filming of reflections creates the effect of printed fabrics, and the often jagged shapes resemble sleeves and lapels on the cutting-room table.

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.

“Bruges” depicts life in a hotel room in a quaint, Belgian tourist town. Residents are also depicted walking and cycling to work on one of the city’s many canal bridges, as wildlife experiences its own reality in the waters below. A fine example of Jennings’ skillful editing.

“Jennings mostly shot ‘Silk Ties’ in New York’s Garment District from the vantage point of a work truck. Filmed while parked on the street and driving in traffic, Jennings captures the rhythms and sensation of this vibrant street life. Edited mostly in-camera, ‘Silk Ties’ reflects the working-class sensibility of its environment.” – Catalogue of the 45th Ann Arbor Film Festival

“Jennings, a prolific and consistently wonderful filmmaker, excels at constructing near-perfect short films out of glimpses of fleeting, ephemeral visual phenomena. Made in Chinatown is a street film in which the human presence is represented only indirectly and in fragments, either through its reflection in shop windows, cars, and other surfaces, or through the shadows it casts. There is nothing extraneous here, nothing which upsets the film’s fragile, delicate balance between what is physically substantial and the immaterial traces of that substantiality.” -Nathaniel Dorsky

“Jennings, a prolific and consistently wonderful filmmaker, excels at constructing near-perfect short films out of glimpses of fleeting, ephemeral visual phenomena. Made in Chinatown is a street film in which the human presence is represented only indirectly and in fragments, either through its reflection in shop windows, cars, and other surfaces, or through the shadows it casts. There is nothing extraneous here, nothing which upsets the film’s fragile, delicate balance between what is physically substantial and the immaterial traces of that substantiality.” -Nathaniel Dorsky

“Jennings, a prolific and consistently wonderful filmmaker, excels at constructing near-perfect short films out of glimpses of fleeting, ephemeral visual phenomena. Made in Chinatown is a street film in which the human presence is represented only indirectly and in fragments, either through its reflection in shop windows, cars, and other surfaces, or through the shadows it casts. There is nothing extraneous here, nothing which upsets the film’s fragile, delicate balance between what is physically substantial and the immaterial traces of that substantiality.” -Nathaniel Dorsky

“Jennings, a prolific and consistently wonderful filmmaker, excels at constructing near-perfect short films out of glimpses of fleeting, ephemeral visual phenomena. Made in Chinatown is a street film in which the human presence is represented only indirectly and in fragments, either through its reflection in shop windows, cars, and other surfaces, or through the shadows it casts. There is nothing extraneous here, nothing which upsets the film’s fragile, delicate balance between what is physically substantial and the immaterial traces of that substantiality.” -Nathaniel Dorsky

“(An) experimental kammerspiel comes to mind: Jim Jennings’ chiaroscuro Close Quarters, which uses vertical blinds to sublime and sexy effect; a romantic sort of cabin fever, less cagey, more bedroom tussle.”

Bike study honors a simpler, communal way of life, in which individuals are content to have peers rather than subordinates. Shot in Netherlands, this film presents an ideal – democracy – in the concrete form of a bicycle park.– Karen Treanor

Elements refers not only to the natural elements, which are variable and even capricious, but also to the social elements, working-class people who are trying to maintain order and routine. – Karen Treanor. NYFF “Views from the Avant Garde”

Reminiscing about Shades six years on.

"In a way, making street films is daydreaming with a camera. It's capturing a fantasy you're having when you're wide awake and life is going on around you. There is, of course, a similarity between daydreaming and making any kind of art because they both spring from that narrow groove between the subconscious and the conscious. That's when self-expression and technical problem-solving both flow together in an almost mystical way. For me this film represents that mental state. I shot it in late July 2001 but put it away for some forgotten reason. It's very much about everyday life–a nondescript New York neighborhood on a calm Sunday afternoon, garbage cans piled high, feet reading here and there . . . but it's also about the magic I can see in that world when I free my subconscious. I made this film so effortlessly (I just cut out one brief shot) because I was so fully in that mindset, which, I think, shows in the nature of the images."

A high contrast, black-and-white architectural study of Manhattan skyscrapers, Megalopolis is a symphony of shapes and forms. Slivers of light and masses of darkness sweep across the screen in this wonderful, graphic work.

San Francisco seen through reflections in moving cars.

Colors swirl in this playful film, shot along the “F” subway line in New York. Obviously, the title makes reference to both the train line and to film exposure.

Short 16mm color film by Jim Jennings.

Jim Jennings' contemplative Silvercup finds soul in the steel bridges and railways binding Manhattan to Queens and a totemic union of past and present in a once-abandoned Long Island City landmark.

"The film was shot and edited in the camera beneath the El at Brighton, Brooklyn a.k.a. 'Little Odessa.' The film is to be experienced for what it is and at the same time suggest a spectrum of incomprehensible inner emotions. The title suggests the motivation which culminates here."–Jim Jennings

"Last autumn on a series of weekend nights I went to “The Crossroads of the World” with a camera and a tape recording of an Opera I love. I played the Opera and shot film for hours at a time. Later in the editing room, I removed what I merely documented and braided the sublime." – Jim Jennings, quoted in the catalogue of the 43rd San Francisco International Film Festival

A film by Jim Jennings

In “Escape,” Jennings does NOT focus on the shifting scenes outside a train window, but rather on the utility wires that line the route. By doing so, he creates an hypnotic, spiritual experience that provides both the comfort of the constant and the excitement of minor change.

The morning commute across the bridge becomes a requiem which ends as the procession goes underground. In memory of Bob Fleischner. (Soundtrack from “Enchanted” by George Shearing and the Montgomery Brothers.) -Karen Treanor, quoted in the catalogue of the 43rd San Francisco International Film Festival

Unfolding buildings drawn across the screen in spectrums of grey reflecting buildings in their surfaces cutting the sky into triangles.

"A unique kind of lyricism comes through and hovers over the images on the screen like the light that projects and contains them." –Ernie Gehr on Jim Jennings' films

Framing out recognition to liberate color and form from the subject so that they become the subject. -Jim Jennings

Set in St. Augustine, Florida, “A Fairy Tale” is a masterpiece of geometry and rhythm, as lines and shapes are set to, and create, a silent percussion. The physical effect of Jennings’ use of spatial and rhythmic tension coupled with visual surprises serves to uncover the unsuspected profundity of small things. (In collaboration with Chris Piazza)

Shot at high noon in New York’s financial district, Wallstreet is much like a vertical tickertape, charting the existence of typical office workers. The film’s elongated shadows suggest these workers’ depersonalized, neuter, nearly uniform lives, which flow by without any solid or stable element that might provide definition.

Shot at high noon in New York’s financial district, Wallstreet is much like a vertical tickertape, charting the existence of typical office workers. The film’s elongated shadows suggest these workers’ depersonalized, neuter, nearly uniform lives, which flow by without any solid or stable element that might provide definition.

Shot at high noon in New York’s financial district, Wallstreet is much like a vertical tickertape, charting the existence of typical office workers. The film’s elongated shadows suggest these workers’ depersonalized, neuter, nearly uniform lives, which flow by without any solid or stable element that might provide definition.

Shot at high noon in New York’s financial district, Wallstreet is much like a vertical tickertape, charting the existence of typical office workers. The film’s elongated shadows suggest these workers’ depersonalized, neuter, nearly uniform lives, which flow by without any solid or stable element that might provide definition.

Dispatch, begins with oscillating greyish surface modulations that move sideways on the screen, rendering our view a partial window to some larger movement taking place. Geographic graphic ribbings then ascend, and as perceived, the thought occurs we might be watching animated film. A shadow of a truck’s front end appears in movement, then comes gently to a halt: we know this image to be photographed, and yet the texture of the film itself hasn’t changed at all.

Dispatch, begins with oscillating greyish surface modulations that move sideways on the screen, rendering our view a partial window to some larger movement taking place. Geographic graphic ribbings then ascend, and as perceived, the thought occurs we might be watching animated film. A shadow of a truck’s front end appears in movement, then comes gently to a halt: we know this image to be photographed, and yet the texture of the film itself hasn’t changed at all.

Dispatch, begins with oscillating greyish surface modulations that move sideways on the screen, rendering our view a partial window to some larger movement taking place. Geographic graphic ribbings then ascend, and as perceived, the thought occurs we might be watching animated film. A shadow of a truck’s front end appears in movement, then comes gently to a halt: we know this image to be photographed, and yet the texture of the film itself hasn’t changed at all.

An unnamed city's angular composition is highlighted in this short by Jim Jennings; Inky black and red geometry betrayed by a beautiful blue sky.

An unnamed city's angular composition is highlighted in this short by Jim Jennings; Inky black and red geometry betrayed by a beautiful blue sky.

An unnamed city's angular composition is highlighted in this short by Jim Jennings; Inky black and red geometry betrayed by a beautiful blue sky.

black and white, 16mm, silent

black and white, 16mm, silent

black and white, 16mm, silent

Stretched across the sky until the film bursts.

Stretched across the sky until the film bursts.

Stretched across the sky until the film bursts.

An experimental film by Jim Jennings.

An experimental film by Jim Jennings.

An experimental film by Jim Jennings.

In “Leaves,” Jim Jennings moves the tree from the periphery of urban life to the center. It’s leaves form a green “curtain” through which we view the activities of the City’s denizens.

In “Leaves,” Jim Jennings moves the tree from the periphery of urban life to the center. It’s leaves form a green “curtain” through which we view the activities of the City’s denizens.

In “Leaves,” Jim Jennings moves the tree from the periphery of urban life to the center. It’s leaves form a green “curtain” through which we view the activities of the City’s denizens.

In “Leaves,” Jim Jennings moves the tree from the periphery of urban life to the center. It’s leaves form a green “curtain” through which we view the activities of the City’s denizens.

When Jim Jennings was a student at Bard College, his professor, Ernie Gehr asked the students in his class to form a frame with their hands, by joining thumbs to forefingers. They were told to walk around “framing” scenes in that manner. Jennings was struck by the simplicity and effectiveness of the lesson and produced this film as a result.

A silent film by Jim Jennings

“In “Refraction,’ the camera is set so that the leaves of a large tree fill the frame. Green ordinary leaves which move in their baroque ways under the wind. In a sense it is shocking to put on film such ordinary things, things which could be so easy to dismiss. Yet this undemanding, pleasant image hides something. The image IS of what one hypnotically stares at in forgotten moments, amd from which one wakes, when shapes make themselves up in it. These furtive possibilities confront the delimiting, all-eyes-cinema. The intimate sensation is made to bear on the public circumstances of film, provoking new readings of the moving leaves. As the image presses its quiet offerings on the viewer, a subtle interaction occurs between changes of speed in the camera and wind as they, in different ways, accentuate or diminish the speed of the fluttering leaves."

Says Karen Treanor of the film: “The Minibike Ride” is Jim Jennings’ oldest extant film, shot when he was a student at Oakwood Friends’ School. For years, it was shown at Danbury High School (CT), until the print of it disappeared". Also screened shortly after completion for members of the avant-garde clique-- the film was called 'intriguing' by Nathaniel Dorsky.