What percentage of all film and music would you say is devoted to romantic love (& all related emotions)? My guess would be 75%.

Yet, during my average day, I find myself wasting way more emotional energy on the city around me — whether it’s hating it, questioning it, or being thankful for it — than on the people in my life. Considering that, it’s odd we don’t emote more often about cities. I’d even argue that our relationships with cities are in a state of constant repression and even passive agression – we deny we’re unhappy about this, we pretend we don’t love that.

The City-Symphony, which typically combines documentary-style film with a score, is the only creative typology dedicated to those emotions, and it has a long and storied (if sparse, in comparison to films and symphonies about, uh, love) tradition.

Plan of the City is an new, contemporary city symphony. It features a group of New Yorkers and New York Buildings rocketing off of Manhattan and ending up in Shanghai for a dance party. Click through for more on the film, plus four other City-Symphonies.

Rem Koolhaas’ famed image of the world’s skyscrapers aggregated in the UAE desert, in which Plan of the City definitely has some aesthetic heritage. Via.

Screenshot from Plan of the City.

First, a bit more about Plan of the City. The music is Change, a piece composed by Judd Greenstein and performed by “acclaimed “indie classical” chamber ensemble” NOW Ensemble, who star in the film. It premiered this month at Le Poisson Rouge in Manhattan. The film itself was created by animator and artist Joshua Frankel, who grew up in Hell’s Kitchen.

Ok! On to the City Symphonies of Yore (and more recent yore):

1) Manhatta (1921), is a cult classic among New Yorkers, and was one of the first city symphonies.

2) Berlin, Symphony of a Great City (1927), perhaps the most famous piece in the genre, adopted a kind of quasi-documentarian voice, offering viewers a scored glimpse into ‘a day in the life’ of Weimar-era Berlin.

3) Philip Glass’ music accompanies Godfrey Reggio’s exposition on cities, nature, and the Modern age in Koyaanisqatsi (1982).

4) Then there’s Sufjan Steven’s BQE Symphony (I saw the b-a-n-a-n-a-s premier at BAM), a cinema-sonic tribute to Robert Moses’ legacy to New York.

by Kelsey Campbell-Dollaghan

posted in Archifilms

tagged cities, city symphonies, film, films, joshua frankel, judd greenstein, music, new, now emsemble, plan of the city, urbanism

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