Pestilent City covers Manhattan from South to North, from Times Square to Harlem, finding along the way ever more poverty, violence, rage and tragic drunkenness. In this world solitude is absolute, cruelty ordinary, and misery the only common possession. The rough black and white, the silence, the hypnotic, pointillistic rendering of bodies, the looks and gestures incapable of making contact with another body – all this elaborates a heroism of immanence. But Goldman’s cinema takes us beyond even the darkest melancholy, because nothing is either lost or given, except for appetite. (Nicole Brenez) 

Night time in Marseille is filmed by Robert Fenz on out of date 7250 ektachrome. La Nuit is a very silent film in unusual and intriguing color tones portraying the textures and lights of quiet streets and a sleeping city which are mirrored in the unpredictable material qualities of his Kodak film. Fenz is one of the most singular and committed filmmakers breathing new life to avant-garde film traditions today. His personal and poetic portraits of people and places have a rare energy and restless beauty. 

When former artist Edi Rama became mayor of Tirana in 2000 he immediately set upon a controversial project to enliven the troubled Albanian capital by re-painting the city’s decaying buildings in a riotous array of colour and pattern. An aesthetic and political act, which prompted social transformation, and much debate, through its visualization of signs of change. Three years later Rama and the project became the subject of artist (and friend) Anri Sala’s spellbinding film, Dammi i Colori.

A passage through the city.
Shadowing people and dogs. 
The night, always mysterious. 
Your eyes open
and for one second you think
that you have seen the truth.

In São Paulo, public and private spaces are kept strictly separated from one another. Gates and night watchmen surround the buildings where people live, protecting them from ‘the danger’ that comes in from the streets. It is tempting to just remain indoors. Leni Huyghe, however, took her camera and went out into the streets at night, where she filmed this dark but beautiful video letter.