Jem Cohen Movies

Brad Whitewood Jr. lives in rural Pennsylvania and has few prospects. Against his mother's wishes, he seeks out his estranged father, the head of a...

Filmed in the coal country of West Virginia, "Matewan" celebrates labor organizing in the context of a 1920s work stoppage. Union organizer, Joe...

Karl, a 70-year-old Austrian astronomer, is at a crossroads in life and work. After a conference in Greece, he decides not to return home and heads...

Chinatown is an evocative place. It exists in our cities, in our imaginations, on our television screens, and in our memories. It is at once a...

Benjamin Smoke is the highly acclaimed documentary by directors Jem Cohen and Peter Sillen on legendary underground musician Benjamin Smoke. Benjamin...

A collection of films from an eclectic array of contributors commissioned to raise funds for the Bristol independent cinema The Cube.

Black Hole Radio is an installation that consists of taped confessions of callers of the New York City Phone Confession Line and video images. The...

A collaboration between Jem Cohen with writer Luc Sante made in Tangier, Morocco, a city where neither of us had ever been. En route from the airport...

An associative collection of visual impressions across fifteen chapters: a seagull in Porto, political posters in New York, an abstract painting in...

A short portrait of Patti Smith in the city where she lives. Patti recites the very first poem-song she ever wrote. We take a walk in her changing...

In Chain, actual malls, theme parks, hotels and corporate centers worldwide are joined into a monolithic superlandscape that shapes and circumscribes...

A security guard working at an art museum in Vienna crosses paths with a Canadian woman in town to visit her ailing cousin.

The band Fugazi is documented over a period of more than ten years (1987-1998) through performance footage and interviews with the band and their...

"I shot this film with a 16mm wind-up Bolex, and the 25th Anniversary tour of Dutch band The Ex, when they embarked on a 'convey tour' with about 25...

Described as "a cross between a video and a documentary, but actually being neither of the two," singer/songwriter Elliott Smith plays three acoustic...

Jem Cohen's memory-tribute to Jonas Mekas displaces its first-person narration from voice-over to on-screen text. Diaristic New York street imagery...

A short musical film

A portrait of an unnamed city in Italy. Sidestepping the tourist attractions that make the city famous, the film/video posits an almost-imaginary...

This film is closely related to my last featurelength project, COUNTING. I take the temperature of a neighborhood. In this case, the place is my New...