Posts by Dr. Sandra E. Cohen
LEO HURWITZ
THE ART OF SEEING 1968 – 1970
LIGHT AND THE CITY
If We Look – What Will We See Next?
Seeing is art for Leo Hurwitz. He sees what others refuse to see. What we see in Light and the City is a piece of this art. And, Leo never turns away from truths that need to reach the light of day. In The Art Of Seeing Series, we are once again privy to the…
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LEO HURWITZ
IN SEARCH OF HART CRANE 1966
Reflections On His Suicide
& His Childhood
Leo Hurwitz’s penetrating and poetic script and his camera (with the assistance of fellow cameraman Manfred Kirchheimer) (Watch Film), follow John Unterecker, Hart Crane’s biographer (the 800-page “Voyager: A Life Of Hart Crane”), through Unterecker’s researches into Hart Crane’s life. In Search of Hart Crane is composed primarily of fascinating interviews with friends of Hart…
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THE SHAPE OF WATER
Seemingly Magic Cures
Cruelty and misunderstanding can make you a monster or a mute. Guillermo del Toro’s compelling allegorical fable, The Shape of Water, shows us that quite well. We can say all the obvious things about this multi-layered film set in its backdrop of the Cold War and a high-security government laboratory in 1962 Baltimore. There’s loneliness…
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LEO HURWITZ 1966
THE SUN & RICHARD LIPPOLD
Unifier & Transformer
The Sun and Richard Lippold (Watch Film) begins with Leo Hurwitz, reminiscing. “In the studio of Richard Lippold, where being a musician as well as a sculptor, he played Bach and Pachelbel for me, where we talked for many hours, an idea came to me which is now this film.” This film, of course, is…
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LEO HURWITZ
ESSAY ON DEATH
IN MEMORY OF JFK 1964
“A very dangerous and uncertain world, the President said on that last day …” Leo Hurwitz’s Essay On Death (Watch Film) speaks to death’s randomness. Of course, JFK’s murder wasn’t random. But death can come out of nowhere at any time. And, that means we live constantly with the fragility of life. At the same…
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THREE BILLBOARDS
OUTSIDE EBBING, MISSOURI
How Does The Buck Finally Stop?
Martin McDonagh’s darkly comic and deeply painful Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri gives us a tough look at how anger and blame is one (ineffective) way of trying to handle very difficult feelings. We have Mildred Hayes (Frances McDormand), a bereaved mom: hardened, blunt, feeling uncharacteristically helpless, and furious about it. The town’s much loved…
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