Ostensibly
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Rudy Burckhardt
Films
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145 W. 21
One of photographer/filmmaker Rudy Burckhardt's earliest 16mm films, 145 W. 21 plays very much like an amateur movie, albeit one featuring an especially notable cast (Burckhardt pals Paul Bowles, Aaron Copland, Edwin Denby and Virgil Thomson, among others). A romantic pair leaves their flat for a desultory burlesque show and...Start your free trial to watch
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Trinidad
Rudy Burckhardt shot plenty of film while he was stationed in Trinidad with the Signal Corps in the early 1940s. This short film compiles some of the choicest bits. Burckhardt samples architectural detail and delves into street-side commerce with a curiosity reminiscent of the earliest Lumière films. Montage sequences...Start your free trial to watch
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Mounting Tension
Larry is a madly energetic, oversexed artist. Jane, a combination of palm reader and psychoanalyst, is trying to straighten him out. John is a straight boy interested in baseball who ends up an abstract painter. Partially shot at the Museum of Modern Art. With John Ashbery, Jane Freilicher, Larry Rivers....Start your free trial to watch
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Under the Brooklyn Bridge
“…one cannot deny its documentary value or Burckhardt’s eye for detail, his unpretentiousness. There are sequences, the children swimming under the Brooklyn Bridge is one, which belong with the best footage on New York by anybody.” - Jonas Mekas, The Village Voice. Music by Claude Debussy and Francis...Start your free trial to watch
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Aviary
Made in collaboration with Joseph Cornell. “Rudy Burckhardt photographed this impression of New York’s Union Square under Joseph Cornell’s direction. This location held a particular fascination for Cornell, who wanted to establish a foundation for artists and art therapy there. In the film he treats the park as an outdoor...Start your free trial to watch
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East Side Summer
Rudy Burckhardt's color portrait of Manhattan's East Side strolls along at an easy pace befitting blue skies and Thelonious Monk's piano score. Where most city symphonies prize grandiose views of the urban organism, Burckhardt sticks to the walker's view; his camera delights in shopping promenades, stoop...Start your free trial to watch
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Lurk
“Happy with his luscious daughter Aurora in a rustic setting, Professor Borealis has devised an improved brain and is ready to transplant it. The humor is tenderly black. Burckhardt’s fusion of documentary-type photography with fairytale storyline is nearer Keystone than avant-garde with its visual honesty and particular...Start your free trial to watch
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Money
MONEY, Rudy Burckhardt’s first featurette, evokes the silent screen comedies of the 1920s. The film was written by Joe Brainard and stars Edwin Denby as Hemlock Stinge, an unlovable billionaire. “The characters are all pretty bad, money is the root of all evil and they ought not to enjoy themselves but they do anyway.” -...Start your free trial to watch
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One Flight Up
ONE FLIGHT UP is both the name of this documentary portrait and the title of a piece by artist Alex Katz. The work-of-the-same-name figures prominently (or, more accurately, entirely) in the film-of-the-same-name. The audio, derived from a popular song by the Beatles, was crafted by poet John Giorno.Start your free trial to watch
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Inside Dope
A pseudo-educational, fictitious documentary survey of the ups, downs, ins and far-outs of Dope. Very funny and slightly sinister, like Red Skelton in the sky with diamonds. - Ron Padgett. With Jacob Burckhardt, Jim Carroll, Edwin Denby, William Dunas, Larry Fagin, Joan Fagin, Red Grooms, Yvonne Jacquette, Edmund Leites,...Start your free trial to watch
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Doldrums
“The New Jersey Turnpike and downtown New York in rain and shine. Trailer trucks, overpasses and industrial wastes become natural wonders. The stream of trucks is often gay but sometimes ominous. After a thunderstorm, the pike gives way to charming and sexy shoppers on 14th Street. Real sounds and wonderful color.” - Edmund...Start your free trial to watch
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Default Averted
When New York was about to go bankrupt, all construction had stopped and an architect tried to become a wrecker. This is the story of the demolition of a large factory building on 23rd Street and 6th Avenue. Meanwhile, daily business (grimy or funny; money or no money) goes on as usual. Music by Thelonius Monk and Edgar Varèse.Start your free trial to watch
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Julie
Swiss-American filmmaker and photographer Rudy Burckhardt references his earlier and similarly autobiographical observation MONTGOMERY, ALABAMA with JULIE (made four decades later), shedding the former film's soldier narrative in favor of a snapshot from his own life in rural Maine. A quintessentially New York experimental...Start your free trial to watch
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Cerveza Bud
“This filmic slice of life coalesces into an ethnographic view of a possible future: the city as a constantly bubbling, delirious playground where yesterday’s monuments are symbols to be triumphed over, and tomorrow never arrives. Perhaps this is why the ultimate effect is one of wistfulness, due also to the unexpected...Start your free trial to watch
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Ostensibly
Rudy Burckhardt's supremely self-possessed montage takes wing on Alvin Curran's meditative piano score and dual readings of the titular poem by John Ashbery. Burckhardt's rhapsodic cutting captures the flux of Ashbery's verses, touching upon frenetic movement and plaintive stillness, public gawking and intimate reverie, urban...Start your free trial to watch
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Night Fantasies
Elliott Carter’s composition of the same title inspired Rudy Burckhardt, in collaboration with Yvonne Jacquette, to photograph this collage-style film. Mostly shot in New York City, but also in Hong Kong and Searsmont, Maine. Dance by Robert Black, Yoshiko Chuma, Grazia Della-Terza, Douglas Dunn, Dana Reitz, Harry Sheppard.Start your free trial to watch
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Scattered Showers
Made in the final year of his life, Rudy Burckhardt's SCATTERED SHOWERS begins its journey in the city he so scrupulously documented in photographs and film for the greater part of his career. Proceeding in the tradition of diaristic collage he was instrumental in creating, it drifts from New York city...Start your free trial to watch
Genres
- Short / Actuality
- Short / Actuality
- International / Americas / North American / American
- International / Americas / North American / American
- International / Americas / North American / American
- International / Americas / North American / American
- International / Americas / North American / American
- International / Americas / North American / American
- International / Americas / North American / American
- International / Americas / North American / American
- International / Americas / North American / American
- International / Americas / North American / American
- International / Americas / North American / American
- International / Americas / North American / American
- International / Americas / North American / American
- International / Americas / North American / American
- International / Americas / North American / American
- International / Americas / North American / American
- International / Americas / North American / American
- International / Americas / North American / American
- International / Americas / North American / American
- International / Americas / North American / American
- International / Americas / North American / American
- Avant-garde
- Avant-garde
- Avant-garde
- Avant-garde
- Comedy / Black Comedy
- Documentary / Cinéma-vérité
- Documentary / Cinéma-vérité
- Documentary / Cinéma-vérité
- Documentary / Cinéma-vérité
- Documentary / Cinéma-vérité
- Documentary / Cinéma-vérité
- Documentary / Cinéma-vérité
- Avant-garde / City Symphony
- Avant-garde / City Symphony
- Avant-garde / City Symphony
- Avant-garde / City Symphony
- Avant-garde / City Symphony
- Avant-garde / City Symphony
- Avant-garde / City Symphony
- Avant-garde / City Symphony
- Avant-garde / City Symphony
- Avant-garde / City Symphony
- Avant-garde / City Symphony
- Avant-garde / City Symphony
- Avant-garde / City Symphony
- Independent / Documentary
- Short / Documentary
- Independent / Documentary
- Short / Documentary
- Short / Documentary
- Short / Documentary
- Short / Documentary
- Independent / Documentary
- Short / Documentary
- Independent / Documentary
- Short / Documentary
- Independent / Documentary
- Short / Documentary
- Short / Documentary
- Short / Documentary
- Drama / Dramedy
- Fantasy / Fairy Tale
- Comedy / Farce
- Comedy / Farce
- Documentary / History
- LGBT
- Comedy / Mockumentary
- Short / Narrative
- Independent / Narrative
- Short / Narrative
- Short / Narrative
- Short / Non-Narrative
- Short / Non-Narrative
- Short / Non-Narrative
- Short / Non-Narrative
- Documentary / Art / Visual Arts / Painting
- Short / Performance
- Adaptation / Literary / Poetry
- Documentary / Political
- Drama / Pseudodocumentary
- Sport / Racing
- Drama / Romantic Drama
- Cult / Hyperreality / Shockumentary
- Avant-garde / Silent
- Avant-garde / Silent
- Avant-garde / Silent
- Avant-garde / Silent
- Avant-garde / Silent
- Avant-garde / Silent
- Silent / Silent Documentary
- Silent / Silent Documentary
- Silent / Silent Drama
- Comedy / Slapstick
- Documentary / Social Issues
- Avant-garde / Surrealist
- Documentary / Travelogue
Recent Reviews
Cerveza Bud
There is much to see here, especially with respects to sociology and social norms. This film is from the late 1970's - 1980. It shows tolerance...of race, creed and sexes....
Doldrums
The fact that Burckhardt had the inclination to film life in motion - everyday life in motion - and recognize it as art; to encapsulate life from a different time...
Under the Brooklyn Bridge
this is a great history of old nyc
145 W. 21
this is a great short film from the old days nyc