documenta 12 trailer: Rush Hour, Morning and Evening, Cheapside 

It is rush hour: everyone is hurrying to work. And later to their homes.
Shadows are the main actors in the pictures of everyday life recorded by artist and film-maker Mark Lewis in London’s financial district. They generate a shift in perspective on pedestrians in the urban space, reminiscent of both Gustave Caillebotte’s oil painting Paris Street, Rainy Day (1877) and photographs taken in the urban space. With shadows as protagonists, reference is made to the medium of film, i.e., its recording methods. In his work Mark Lewis often reflects on the influence of the shadow motif on visual culture: „From the moment that shadows were first traced on walls, the history of painting has been one of trying to understand movement and to depict it in the stillness of a picture.“ (Lewis) In a certain sense the film implements the ambition of painting to move (itself); at the same time calling into question what is traditionally defined as a picture.

The trailer will be shown at art house cinemas throughout Germany starting on 29 May 2007. You can take a first look here. 

The trailer is a an excerpt taken from Rush Hour, Morning and Evening, Cheapside (2005), 35 mm, transferred to HD, 4 Minutes, Film from Mark Lewis, courtesy of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, Fund for the Twenty-First Century.


back