“I wanted to show how common are those vulgar pleasures meant as grotesque, made of flesh and death, and representing the last tremors of a society that disowns itself, and makes me become sick andl ooking for a revolutionary solution”.

Jean Vigo

“Buried in Light” emerges from a deep enchantment given by the fuzzy and fadedimages used by Jem Cohen, Walter Ruttmann and Jean Vigo to define the portraits of lots of cities. They had the extraordinary ability tounderstand the contradictions of cities, crossing through the arrhythmias and the presences/absences of the passing of time. In this way they could open a vertigo to interrupt theflow of spaces and events, forcing an alternative
point of view.
The Focus opens with Berlin, symphony of a great city, which is Walter Ruttman’s 1927 masterpiece, presented with the live soundtrack performance of the roman band Zu, and closes with a tribute to Jean Vigo, with his first movie A propos de Nice (1930): with this movie he destroys in 20 minutes all the common places referring to Cote d’Azur and to itscapital “…paradise for a cosmopolitan postwarsharky-attitude”. (J. Vigo)
We also introduce a partial retrospective on the New Yorker filmmaker Jem Cohen, who develops through his wandering point of view,a series of visions constructed on urban spaces, creating a connection to different cities like Berlin, New York, Pisa, the Eastern Europe capitalsand finally Nice.
Jem Cohen, hybrid and versatile artist of the U.S. independent art scene, was born in Kabul (Afghanistan) in 1962, and came to America after having lived in lots of different countries due to his father’s work (his family are of Hebrew origin from Eastern Europe). He finally settled in NewYork which has become the absolute protagonist of a large number of his works and a place of stratification and metamorphosis with no answerto continuity of time and vision: “...New York is a city where I feel at home, and maybe it will always be like this. It never bores me, and I loveit for this…” (J. Cohen)After working in different sectors – he also worked as a pedlar – he finally began to work as a stage assistant in several movies, like AfterHours by Martin Scorsese and Sid and Nancy By Alex Cox, and at the same time started todevelop a personal interest in film-makingusing old 8mm and 16mm cameras.
His education and artistic activity was influenced by photographers like Leon Levinstein (to whom he dedicated This is a History of NewYork), August Sander, Walker Evans, William Klein and Robert Frank, by directors like Jean Vigo and John Cassavetes, by the the philosopher Walter Benjamin. He was often inspired by music too, and directednon-commercial band videos (among themTalk about the Passion by R.E.M., the documentary Instrument about Fugazi and another one about Vic Chesnutt). He also collaborated with poets, writers and musicians like Patty Smith, and worked on classic music videos.Among his titles, we introduce videos aboutPisa (Amber city) and Catania (Blood Orange Sky), and his last productions (NYWaM), but Thisis a History of New York, Buried in Light and LostBook Found still remain his better works.
The film he used (16mm and super8 transferred to video) stamps on our retinas rare fied images with an extraordinary persistance and vitality in which human beings, street corners, times, goods and buildings seem to float together like fragments of a past civilisation or maybe of afuture culture.
In collaboration with: Goethe Institut, Ambasciata Francese, Bundes Film Archiv, Gaumont, Lux distribution, Jem Cohen, MonicaMaurer, Sandra Lischi, Zu, Cineteca Nazionale (Laura Argento), Eva Riehl.
Special thanks toValentina  Pasquali.