A Perilous Proceeding

At a building being constructed at Broadway and 13th Street in Manhattan, a boom or crane from which a platform is suspended on a cable first pulls the platform up, then swings it out from the top floor where it's been resting, and then gradually lowers it seven-plus stories to the ground below. On it at least 11 men stand or hold on to the cable. All wear dark coveralls and hats. They wave toward the camera. At the ground and on the lower floors, other workers are busy. This picture was taken by means of a special apparatus which enabled the camera to follow the men as they were lowered to the ground.

Flow

way

San Francisco filmmaker Konrad Steiner took 12 years to complete a montage cycle set to the late Leslie Scalapino’s most celebrated poem, way—a sprawling book-length odyssey of shardlike urban impressions, fraught with obliquely felt social and sexual tensions. Six stylistically distinctive films for each section of way, using sources ranging from Kodachrome footage of sun-kissed S.F. street scenes to internet clips of the Iraq war to a fragmented Fred Astaire dance number.

As

Three years after the death of her beloved child, Elouise, Mara still feels her presence when she sits on the butterfly bedding in front of the jar with her ashes in it. Mara arranges a twelfth birthday party for Elouise, further alienating her from her husband, Richter, and remaining daughter, Hannah. Although Mara eventually vacates Elouise's room at the insistence of her husband, she does find a way to stay close to Elouise. Before long, however, Hannah discovers her mother's secret.