“COUNTING” (2015) by JEM COHEN

New York based director, Jem Cohen, is especially known for his films and installations based on observational portraits and diary recordings of urban landscapes which navigate between documentary, fiction and experimental cinema. His films are in the collections of the Whitney Museum and MoMA in New York. Cohen’s cinema returns to Serralves with his most recent film "Counting” (2015). In fifteen linked chapters shot in locations ranging from Moscow to New York to Istanbul, "Counting” merges city symphony, diary film, and personal/political essay to create a vivid portrait of contemporary life. Perhaps the most personal of Cohen's films ("Museum Hours", "Chain", "Instrument", "Benjamin Smoke"), "Counting” measures street life, light and time, noting not only surveillance and overdevelopment but resistance and its phantoms as manifested in music, animals and everyday magic.The film also includes images from Porto shot during the director’s stay in this city for the presentation of the audiovisual show "Gravity Hill: Sound + Image” at "Serralves em Festa” festival that, in 2014, brought him together with the musicians Guy Picciotto, Jim White and George Xylouris, who rank amongst Cohen’s collaborators in the present film.

Image: A scene from Jem Cohen's COUNTING. Courtesy of Cinema Guild.