Glitch
2015 · 2m · United States
Directed by Elie Azzam
Genres: experimental
Tones: contemplative, dark
An experimental video shot during a two-week stay in New York City and Washington, DC, editing footage of the two cities into a moody piece that surfaces their darker, uneasier undercurrents.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
Azzam shoots a holiday like everyone else does, but then makes the weird choice to strip it down to pure shadow—no narrative permission slip, just handheld unease pooling in the margins of two cities. It's deliberately boring in the most subversive way possible.
The film locates itself in a lineage of experimental city portraiture, but the edit is where the rigor lives—each cut between NYC and DC functions as a formal argument about what darkness means when you're not looking for it.
Two minutes of untethered handheld footage could be nothing, but Azzam's decision to let the *rhythm* of the edit—not the locations—carry the mood is what transforms a vacation archive into something genuinely eerie and considered.