STREETSCAPES [DIALOGUE]

A film by Heinz Emigholz
2017, 132 minutes

No. 183
Narrative

Description

A director speaks at length to a psychoanalyst, confiding his obsessions, fears, ideas about cinema, and psychological blocks, and eventually comes to realize that this all-encompassing exchange could be the basis of a film . . .

Streetscapes [Dialogue] is based on a six-day psychoanalytic marathon that Emigholz undertook with trauma specialist Zohar Rubinstein—their roles are played in the film by American actor John Erdman and Argentinian filmmaker Jonathan Perel, who are photographed in and around buildings in Uruguay by Julio Vilamajó, Eladio Dieste, and Arno Brandlhuber.

The result is Emigholz’s magnum opus, a demonstration of his singular working methods, and a playful, moving treatise on trauma and architecture in which foreground and background carry equal weight.

Festivals

Official Selection, Berlin Film Festival Official Selection

Art of the Real, Film Society of Lincoln Center

Reviews

“Emigholz’s magnum opus. It is many things at once: a self-portrait, a manifesto, a reenactment that doubles as a making-of documentary, a strikingly literal form of psychodrama… A film based on a therapeutic scenario may sound dry, but in effect Streetscapes [Dialogue] is a sensory bombardment, and very funny to boot, bringing to the surface the undercurrent of deadpan humor that runs through much of Emigholz’s work.” - Dennis Lim, Artforum

"An epic psychoanalytic conversation... Emigholz is like Godard in that one’s appreciation for his work increases the more one watches. His oeuvre becomes more comprehensible when viewed sequentially, as the films often don’t stand alone but gain meaning cumulatively, in relation to one another. Streetscapes, by supplying insights on film theory in general, Emigholz’s films and filmmaking in particular, and his view of the world, can be viewed as the skeleton key necessary to unlocking not just his latest quartet, but also his entire career." - Hyperallergic

"Serence and enveloping... something approaching meta-therapeutic memoir." - Cinema Scope