For many years Mark Street has been making small, observational films of the details and energies of public spaces in urban settings. City blocks, parking spaces and storefronts (and the people who bustle on by them) become abstractions as viewed in reflected rain or through the scratched glass of a bus stop enclosure. These city spaces identify a place but carry the mark of time, and are not divorceable from the moment of their making. The works presented in this program are all recent works, made since the pandemic and its associated impositions of social closure and eventual re-opening. During this period, many of us who were stranded, homebound in urban places found the types of daily walks recognizable in these films to be a rare avenue of escape and source of non-digitially-mediated stimulation. First from his home in New York, Street's restless camera wanders as soon as it is able to Paris, Belfast, and Glasgow as well, seeking visual rhyme and reason between these places and revealing, unassuming detail by unassuming detail, specific political contexts that separate and unite them. Where art practice and legacy is often spoken of as humankind crassly leaving a mark on this much-marked planet, these streets have instead marked Street, whose camera functions not as a pen but as a foil, reflecting the city (cities) back on itself.Films:

• Clear Ice Fern 2023 12 min
• A Song For Some Reason 2023 18 min
• The Grain of Belfast 2022 6 min
• A Better Relationship with the Unknown 2022 18 min
• May 12, 2022 2023 10 min
• Long Ago and Far Away 2023 2 min

https://www.millenniumfilm.org/event-details/street-life-the-personal-ci...