EMPIRES OF TIN

COHEN, JEM

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Evenings Civil Twilight In Empires Of Tin

NOTES

In EMPIRES OF TIN, Jem Cohen brings together film, text, and musical performance to create a unique meditation on a central question of our time: what are the effects of Empire? Are past manifestations mirrored in our own time, and if empires still exist, how can we measure their rise and fall?

The project juxtaposes the twilight of the Austro-Hungarian dynasty just before World War One with recent conditions in the U.S. It originated as a multi-media event commissioned by the Viennale (Vienna International Film Festival) which consisted of 16mm film footage shot by Cohen in Vienna and New York, archival images, readings from the texts of Joseph Roth (whose 1930’s novels served as key inspirations) and a live soundtrack by Vic Chesnutt, Members of Silver Mt. Zion, Guy Picciotto (from Fugazi), and T.Griffin with Catherine McRae. The film version unites the original 16mm footage with documentation of the live musical performance, creating a distinctive hybrid form which Cohen describes as a “documentary musical hallucination.”

from http://www.ifccenter.com/films/empires-of-tin/

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