Richard Estes comment on "West of the Tracks": I watched the first two of these at the PFA back in 2004, 2005, sometime around then, and saw the last one, "Rails" at the SF Art Institute, or some such place, a year and a half later. I drove quite a distance to see them because I was highly motivated to do so, I sensed that there was something unique and compelling about them from the program guide description (somewhere here, there is an insight about how one of the only remaining places for the cinematic presentation of working class life is within the academically supported screening of films at universities art schools and art museums).
Anyway, your characterization of them as something Gray or Blake might have done with a video camara in the 18th Century is apt. Given his vivid characterization of Manchester in the 1840s, Engels might have done the same. In "Rust", the beginning and ending sequences of the goods train entering and exiting the factories symbolizes our entry and exit into an industrial world that has been almost completely dismantled, along with the social and culture life associated with it. Factory workers move through abandoned parts of the complex to work in those areas still open for production, and the scenes of these people at work are some of the greatest visual representations of industrial labor ever achieved. Wang Bing poignantly presents the social and cultural aspects of the closure of the complex in the second part, "Remnants", as the loss of worker housing results in the disintegration of decades of social relationships. There may be no agit-prop here, but Michael Moore has never come close to attaining the artistic and political impact of these films. I hesitate to say that something is the best, or essential or a masterpiece, but this is probably the most compelling work that I have seen in the last 15 years, since I had the opportunity to see "Berlin Alexanderplatz", which is obviously very different. But the social insight and the identification with the everyday life and emotional experiences of people who have been marginalized is a thread that runs between them. --- Also this: Coincidentally, WEST OF THE TRACKS will be playing MoMA over two days later this month: http://www.moma.org/visit/calendar/film_screenings/18241 & http://www.moma.org/visit/calendar/film_screenings/18242 _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
