Screening

Year Released:
1927
Genres:
Documentary
Metadata:
Directed by Walter Ruttmann
CINEMA BY DESIGN: ART + DESIGN ON SCREEN

Silent film with live piano accompaniment by Craig Davis.  

This semi-documentary film presents one day in the life of Berlin as a city, capturing the rhythm of the time through visual and abstract impressions, absent of narration. Not unlike Dziga Vertov’s Man with a Movie Camera, which came two years later in 1929, the film became part of a genre of ‘city symphony’ films that sequence events to imply a loose impression of the city’s daily life. Walter Ruttmann described his intent as purely aesthetic, “ … creating a symphonic film out of the millions of energies that comprise the life of a big city.” Print courtesy of IU Libraries Moving Image Archive. (16mm Presentation)

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