Necrology

United States

1971

12 Min

Black and White

English

Currently 4.1/5 Stars.
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In NECROLOGY, a 12-minute film, in one continuous shot he films the faces of a 5:00 PM crowd descending via the Pan Am building escalators. In old-fashioned black and white, these faces stare into the empty space, in the 5:00 PM tiredness and mechanical impersonality, like faces from the grave. It’s hard to believe that these faces belong to people today. The film is one of the strongest and grimmest comments upon the contemporary society that cinema has produced." —The Village Voice

Director

Standish Lawder

A professor of art history and film, a photographer and an inventor, Standish Lawder has made truly experimental films by seeing what a predetermined idea about content, structure, or technique will produce when carried out in shooting or printing. Lawder has taught at Harvard, Yale, UC San Diego, and at Denver Darkroom, which he founded. He is the author of The Cubist Cinema.

A distinguished philosopher and professor at Harvard, Stanley Cavell had just published The World Viewed, his first book on film, when he appeared on this program. His subsequent writing on film includes Pursuits of Happiness and Contesting Tears. —UbuWeb