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Live music accompaniment will be by classical pianist Mauro Colombis. Please scroll down for more info.

Manhatta 1921

Cited as the first avant-garde film made in the United States and the earliest city symphony, Manhatta is a short portrait of the bustling metropolis of Manhattan in 1920. Influential photographers Charles Sheeler and Paul Strand collaborated on Manhatta utilising their signature fascinations with urban living. The silent film uses intertitles of Walt Whitman’s poem ‘Mannahatta’ which are interspersed with 65 city shots to form a proud and majestic imagining of Manhattan.

12 minutes | All Ages

Melbhattan 2012

'Melbhattan is part homage, part pastiche of the opening sequence of Woody Allen’s seminal 1979 film Manhattan. It features more than sixty black and white tableaux of Melbourne each composed to mimic images in Allen’s film.' Oslo Davis

5 minutes | All Ages

Douro, Faina Fluvial (Labor on the Douro River) 1931

The first film by grandmaster Portuguese film director Manoel de Oliveira, this city symphony is embedded on the banks of the Douro River which crosses through the filmmakers hometown of Porto. As with many city symphony films that are experimental in nature, the film was initially derided. It’s first screening to Portuguese film critics was booed but the film was later hailed as a stunning portrait of the city which particularly focused on dock workers and the poor classes. A lyrical visual document, it went on to screen at the Venice Film Festival in 1976 and later at Cannes Film Festival in the ‘Cannes Classics’ section in 2010.

18 minutes | All Ages

Rien que les heures (Nothing But Time) 1926

A day in the life of Paris from dawn till dusk. Brazilian director Alberto Cavalcanti blends documentary and staged drama on Paris’s streets with experimental filming techniques. Cats stalk the cobblestones, the hardworking wearily return home from their jobs, a sailor deeply kisses his beloved. Cavalcanti's camera invents new ways to frame a much-documented city – it zooms through the air looking out from a merry-go-round and later a wall of overlapping eyes peer out from a darkened cinema screen.

43 minutes | All Ages