Jem Cohen Master Class
by electricmask
Sunday afternoon, at the Ukrainian Federation, New York filmmaker, Jem Cohen, showed some of his works for a POP Montreal/National Film Board of Canada “Making Music 3” Master Class. Cohen’s work is often observational vignettes of urban life. He captures real-life serendipitous situations and creates a poetic pastiche in which the viewer is left to his/her subjective point of view to search for a political angle within.
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Cohen is also known for his collaboration with musicians. He’s worked with artists from REM to God Speed You Black Emperor! to Blonde Redhead. The class itself was intended to inspire young filmmakers and musicians to mingle and collaborate on a film of their own. NFB’s program, Making Music 3, provides a musician/filmmaker team the resources to develop and produce a short film together. “Collaboration” is the spirit of the program, and the NFB is welcoming applications up until November 10th, but you can see the NFB website for yourself for all the details, or contact Melisa Forero: M.Forero@nfb.ca for more info.
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Published on: October 5th, 2008
About: electricmask
a triangle. sometimes 4 points. at times, a pentagon.
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Thanks for the update! Would be possible to add some more descriptive elements about how this “master class” went down, what kind of points were covered, stuff like that? How many peeps were in attendance, etc? What Cohen was like?
Thanks!
Posted on October 6th, 2008 at 8:14 am [permalink]
yes! i second that emotion!
Posted on October 6th, 2008 at 8:20 am [permalink]
the class, which started 45 minutes late, wasn’t really a “class”. it was more of a discussion of jem cohen’s work. he showed clips of his films, discussed them, and took questions from a panel and the audience. there was a good crowd of 50-100 filmmakers and musicians. the nfb gave a short opening and introduced the event with a film from last year’s “Making Music 3″, called “The Mixing Tapes”. they stressed that the program be more about music inspiring the film, rather than vice versa. Jem came out next, mild-mannered but very much a perfectionist. he insisted his films were shown on a projection screen that met his approval, which may be why everything was so late. he spoke mostly about his observational approach to film and some morality issues that brings about, and also on his political (or lack-their-of) agenda. he also was pleased to say that he and a group of artists banded together and actually reversed legislation banning photographers to take photos on the streets of New York, due to fears of terrorism. maybe i should’ve said all that in the blog.
Posted on October 6th, 2008 at 6:02 pm [permalink]
making music “2″, i mean
Posted on October 6th, 2008 at 6:03 pm [permalink]
lack-”there”-of
Posted on October 6th, 2008 at 6:04 pm [permalink]