Gravity Hill NEWSREELS – 12 short observations about Occupy Wall Street

As Occupy Wall Street entrenched itself in Lower Manhattan last fall, avant-documentarian Jem Cohen began paying regular visits to Zuccotti Park to collect HD footage. Cohen’s atmospheric shorts distinguish themselves among the din of Occupy videos by an alert but restrained formal register—carefully constructed, intuitively cut, strikingly composed. The videos are observational— ethnographic even—and are less expository dispatches than airy patchworks, rhythmical distillations of Occupy as it was on the ground. One short shows Zuccotti Park swollen with visitors during the day; another, set at night, bustles with scattered rituals and routines. (Jesse P. Finnegan)