A City Is
1972 · 17m · Canada
Directed by James Carney
Genres: documentary, essay film, experimental
Tones: contemplative, surreal
Split screens multiply into simultaneous urban impressions without narration. Traffic, crowds, and architecture collide in a portrait of metropolitan energy.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Split screens without the usual experimental grandstanding—it's almost *boring* how restrained this is, which somehow makes the chaos more disorienting than if Carney had tried harder to be weird.
A masterclass in structural restraint; the split-screen multiplication sits squarely in the lineage of '70s structural cinema and Warhol's durational work, but Carney's refusal of commentary lets the formal rigor speak louder than most manifestos.
The decision to let the cuts between screens *breathe* instead of frantically sync them creates this strange meditative pulse—seventeen minutes feels like watching a city's nervous system slow down, and that one compositional choice is what makes it work.