Jem Cohen

Little, Big, and Far (2026)

Karl, a 70-year-old Austrian astronomer, is at a crossroads in life and work. After a conference in Greece, he decides not to return home and heads for a small island in hopes of finding a sky dark enough to reconnect with the stars. ...

Ballad of Philip Guston (2022)

An unorthodox essay film on the renowned but controversial painter, Philip Guston. Ballad interweaves Guston's biography, influences, and philosophical approach to art with Cohen's deeply personal engagement with the man and his work. ...

Or Nothing (The Double) (2022)

Makeshift (for Mekas) (2019)

Jem Cohen's memory-tribute to Jonas Mekas displaces its first-person narration from voice-over to on-screen text. Diaristic New York street imagery from 2015 mingles with the red roses of Lithuania and a 'makeshift memorial' to this beloved figure of the a ...

NYC Weights and Measures (2018)

"Like a floating, drifting piece of ticker tape, the film makes its way across boroughs and time to explore New York City's many moods, from loud and relentless to grave and dreamy. ...

This Climate (2018)

The stock exchange, the sky, customers, and pedestrians. All are observed at a distance, with care, in the newest work by Jem Cohen. ...

Birth of a Nation (2017)

In "Birth of a Nation", Jem Cohen takes his camera to Donald Trump's presidential inauguration and to the next day's protests. ...

World Without End (No Reported Incidents) (2016)

A portrait of Southend-on-Sea, a town along England's Thames estuary, that includes everyday streets, people, birds, water, mud and sky. ...

Peter Hutton (2016)

A portrait of Peter Hutton. ...

Bury Me Not (2016)

This film is closely related to my last featurelength project, COUNTING. I take the temperature of a neighborhood. In this case, the place is my New York. I think about street life and its threatened demise – a death ushered in as Big Money relentlessly ...

On Essex Road (2016)

An observational portrait of London's Essex Street, and the inhabitants who work the shops and throng the pavement there (Julie Murray). ...

Counting (2015)

An associative collection of visual impressions across fifteen chapters: a seagull in Porto, political posters in New York, an abstract painting in St. Petersburg, an abandoned video shop in Cairo and cats everywhere you look. ...

The Film That Buys the Cinema (2014)

A collection of films from an eclectic array of contributors commissioned to raise funds for the Bristol independent cinema The Cube. ...

Museum Hours (2012)

A security guard working at an art museum in Vienna crosses paths with a Canadian woman in town to visit her ailing cousin. ...

20 Little Films (2012)

Since 1995, the Viennale has invited renowned directors to create short, one-minute films as personal contributions to the festival. Ranging from home movies to political essays, musical sketches to abstract studies, these "little films" form a unique anth ...

Gravity Hill Newsreels: Occupy Wall Street (2011)

Cohen, who witnessed the New York occupation from day one, borrowed a digital camera and started gathering footage in subsequent weeks. Initially acting upon an instinctive impulse to document and be guided by the events of the movement through quiet parti ...

Anne Truitt, Working (2010)

A portrait of artist Anne Truitt made primarily in and around her studio at the Yaddo artists' community. ...

Crossing Paths with Luce Vigo (2010)

A portrait of Luce Vigo, film critic, educator, and the daughter of pivotal French filmmaker Jean Vigo. Commissioned by the Spanish documentary festival, Punto de Vista, the film incorporates Luce's memories of her extraordinary life, reflections on her fa ...

Chinatown Film Project (2009)

Chinatown is an evocative place. It exists in our cities, in our imaginations, on our television screens, and in our memories. It is at once a sprawling, vibrant immigrant community and a forgotten strip mall of buffet restaurants. ...

Long for the City (Patti Smith in New York) (2009)

A short portrait of Patti Smith in the city where she lives. Patti recites the very first poem-song she ever wrote. We take a walk in her changing neighborhood, and I ask her what she saw. ...

Le bled (Buildings in a Field) (2009)

A collaboration between Jem Cohen with writer Luc Sante made in Tangier, Morocco, a city where neither of us had ever been. En route from the airport to the city center, we found ourselves amazed by the landscape outside of the car windows; a massive const ...

Night Scene New York (2009)

Chance observations of New York's Chinatown, commissioned by the Museum of Chinese in the Americas. "A sleepwalker's circumnavigation of one of the less homogenized parts of the city. ...

Evening's Civil Twilight in Empires of Tin (2008)

This surreal art-movie/live-performance hybrid is comprised of New York filmmaker Jem Cohen's original 16mm and DV movie footage combined with concert clips of Vic Chesnutt and members of Silver Mt. Zion, among others. ...

Half The Battle (2008)

"I shot this film with a 16mm wind-up Bolex, and the 25th Anniversary tour of Dutch band The Ex, when they embarked on a 'convey tour' with about 25 performing comrades. If half the battle is getting there and half the battle is joy, then the other half is ...

A Tale of Two Cities (2007)

The official trailer of Viennale - Vienna International Film Festival 2007. ...

free (2007)

Commissioned by Renew Media to celebrate 20th Anniversary of Media Arts Fellowships ...

Spirit (Smells Like Teen Spirit) (2007)

The film is a domestic portrait of Patti and her son, Jackson. William Blake was invited in the form of a plaster cast of his death mask. Kurt Cobain, (conflicted, fierce, gentle, and another mother's son) was invited as an admirer of Leadbelly. Cats were ...

Building a Broken Mousetrap (2006)

An unorthodox concert film of the Holland-based band, the Ex, playing in New York. Intercut with city footage and documentation of anti-war, anti-Bush demonstrations. ...

Blessed are the Dreams of Men (2006)

Moving towards an unknown destination, a group of anonymous passengers float through an unidentified landscape ...

Chain (2004)

In Chain, actual malls, theme parks, hotels and corporate centers worldwide are joined into a monolithic superlandscape that shapes and circumscribes the lives of two women. One is a businesswoman researching the international theme park industry for her c ...

The Foxx and Little Vic (2002)

A short musical film ...

Sonic Cinema: Sparklehorse (2001)

All of the album's songs were made into music videos by various filmmakers, such as the Quay Brothers, Garine Torossian, Grant Gee, and Guy Maddin. ...

Benjamin Smoke (2000)

Benjamin Smoke is the highly acclaimed documentary by directors Jem Cohen and Peter Sillen on legendary underground musician Benjamin Smoke. Benjamin Smoke follows the crooked path of this fringe-dweller, speed-freak, occasional drag-queen and all-around r ...

Little Flags (2000)

Cohen shot Little Flags in black and white on the streets of lower Manhattan during an early-'90s military ticker-tape parade and edited the footage years later. The crowd noises fade and Cohen shows the litter flooding the streets as the urban location lo ...

Instrument (1999)

The band Fugazi is documented over a period of more than ten years (1987-1998) through performance footage and interviews with the band and their fans. Director Jem Cohen's relationship with band member Ian MacKaye extends back to the 1970s when the two m ...

Amber City (1999)

A portrait of an unnamed city in Italy. Sidestepping the tourist attractions that make the city famous, the film/video posits an almost-imaginary place that draws closer to the reality of its inhabitants. Using a voiceover narration that collages direct ob ...

Blood Orange Sky (1999)

A portrait of Catania, Sicily. Includes the ocean at 5 a.m., the fish market, the distributor of pornographic films, the woodworker, the elephant statue, housing projects, and a young girl in an orange sweater. Catania is a large and remarkable city withou ...

Lucky Three: An Elliott Smith Portrait (1997)

Described as "a cross between a video and a documentary, but actually being neither of the two", singer/songwriter Elliott Smith plays three acoustic songs in this Jem Cohen-directed short film. ...

Museum (1997)

Unreleased silent Super 8 film, shot in the mid 1990s; an early precursor to Museum Hours. ...

Lost Book Found (1996)

The result of over five years of Super-8 and 16mm filming on New York City streets, Lost Book Found melds documentary and narrative into a complex meditation on city life. The piece revolves around a mysterious notebook filled with obsessive listings of pl ...

Nightswimming (1995)

An erotic music video and short film about skinny-dipping. ...

Buried in Light (1994)

A meditation on history, memory, and change in Central and Eastern Europe, Buried in Light is a non-narrative journey, a cinematic collage. Cohen's "search for images" began at a time of extraordinary flux, as the Berlin Wall was dismantled—opening borde ...

Black Hole Radio (1992)

Black Hole Radio is an installation that consists of taped confessions of callers of the New York City Phone Confession Line and video images. The Phone Confession Line is based on anonymous callers ringing to confess on things they had done or thought lik ...

R.E.M. - This Film Is On (1991)

This 50-minute release features promotional videos to the band's four singles from Out of Time ('Losing My Religion', 'Shiny Happy People', 'Near Wild Heaven' and 'Radio Song') in addition to videos to the album tracks 'Low', 'Belong', 'Half A World Away' ...

Drink Deep (1991)

Drink Deep is a lyrical vision of friendship, hidden secrets, and desires. Cohen uses several types of film image to add texture to the layered composition. Beautiful shades of grey, silver, black and blue echo the water, reminiscent of early photography a ...

Sketches for Late City Final (1991)

Sketches for Late City Final (Jem Cohen, Peter Hutton, Jeff Preiss, Adam Grossman Cohen, co-produced by Fred Riedel, c. ...

Just Hold Still (1989)

In his New York City landscape, Cohen finds inspiration in disturbance. Looking to life for rhythm and to architecture for state of mind, he locates simple mysteries. Just Hold Still is comprised of an interconnected series of short works and collaboration ...

Light Years (1989)

The memory of a person, or the memory of a place (Rhys Graham). ...

Glueman (1989)

Collaboration with Fugazi ...

4:44 (from her house home) (1989)

A personal, poetic approach to narrative, originally shot on 8mm film and mastered to ¾" video. ...

Matewan (1987)

Filmed in the coal country of West Virginia, "Matewan" celebrates labor organizing in the context of a 1920s work stoppage. Union organizer, Joe Kenehan, a scab named "Few Clothes" Johnson and a sympathetic mayor and police chief heroically fight the power ...

This Is a History of New York (1987)

A history of New York City from Prehistoric times through the Space Age, composed entirely from documentary street footage. ...

At Close Range (1986)

Brad Whitewood Jr. lives in rural Pennsylvania and has few prospects. Against his mother's wishes, he seeks out his estranged father, the head of a gang of thieves in a nearby town. Though his new girlfriend supports his criminal ambitions, Brad Jr. soon l ...

4:44 (from her house home) (1989)

A personal, poetic approach to narrative, originally shot on 8mm film and mastered to ¾" video. ...