Jem Cohen

A personal, poetic approach to narrative, originally shot on 8mm film and mastered to ¾” video. Created in collaboration with Gabriel...

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

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...

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

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

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

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

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

Cohen shot Little Flags in black and white on the streets of lower Manhattan during an early-’90s military ticker-tape parade and edited the...

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

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

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

The result of over five years of Super-8 and 16mm filming on New York City streets, Lost Book Found melds documentary and narrative into a complex...

Drink Deep is a lyrical vision of friendship, hidden secrets, and desires. Cohen uses several types of film image to add texture to the layered...

Unreleased silent Super 8 film, shot in the mid 1990s; an early precursor to Museum Hours.

A portrait of artist Anne Truitt made primarily in and around her studio at the Yaddo artists' community.

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

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...

This surreal art-movie/live-performance hybrid is comprised of New York filmmaker Jem Cohen's original 16mm and DV movie footage combined with...

A meditation on history, memory, and change in Central and Eastern Europe, Buried in Light is a non-narrative journey, a cinematic collage....

A film by Jem Cohen

Moving towards an unknown destination, a group of anonymous passengers float through an unidentified landscape

A history of New York City from Prehistoric times through the Space Age, composed entirely from documentary street footage.

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...

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...

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

In his New York City landscape, Cohen finds inspiration in disturbance. Looking to life for rhythm and to architecture for state of mind, he locates...

The official trailer of Viennale - Vienna International Film Festival 2007.

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

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

A portrait of Catania, Sicily. Includes the ocean at 5 a.m., the fish market, the distributor of pornographic films, the woodworker, the elephant...

"Like a floating, drifting piece of ticker tape, the film makes its way across boroughs and time to explore New York City's many moods, from loud and...

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...

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...

All of the album's songs were made into music videos by various filmmakers, such as the Quay Brothers, Garine Torossian, Grant Gee, and Guy Maddin.

A personal, poetic approach to narrative, originally shot on 8mm film and mastered to ¾” video. Created in collaboration with Gabriel...

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...

Cohen, who witnessed the New York occupation from day one, borrowed a digital camera and started gathering footage in subsequent weeks. Initially...

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

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

A sudden rainstorm, 6th Avenue at West Fourth, NYC. That's all.

The film is a domestic portrait of Patti and her son, Jackson. William Blake was invited in the form of a plaster cast of his death mask. Kurt...

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...

This surreal art-movie/live-performance hybrid is comprised of New York filmmaker Jem Cohen's original 16mm and DV movie footage combined with...

This surreal art-movie/live-performance hybrid is comprised of New York filmmaker Jem Cohen's original 16mm and DV movie footage combined with...

This surreal art-movie/live-performance hybrid is comprised of New York filmmaker Jem Cohen's original 16mm and DV movie footage combined with...

Each year since 1995, the Viennale has asked a great, international director to make his or her own personal contribution to the festival: a...

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...

A portrait of Southend-on-Sea, a town along England's Thames estuary, that includes everyday streets, people, birds, water, mud and sky.

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...

A portrait of Luce Vigo, film critic, educator, and the daughter of pivotal French filmmaker Jean Vigo. Commissioned by the Spanish documentary...

In "Birth of a Nation", Jem Cohen takes his camera to Donald Trump’s presidential inauguration and to the next day’s protests.

A short musical film

This 50-minute release features promotional videos to the band's four singles from Out of Time ('Losing My Religion', 'Shiny Happy People', 'Near...

In View: The Best Of R.E.M. 1988–2003 is a DVD featuring videos by the rock band R.E.M. during 1988–2003, released as a companion to the...

A portrait of Peter Hutton.

Chance observations of New York's Chinatown, commissioned by the Museum of Chinese in the Americas. “A sleepwalker’s circumnavigation of...

Sketches for Late City Final (Jem Cohen, Peter Hutton, Jeff Preiss, Adam Grossman Cohen, co-produced by Fred Riedel, c. 1991)

The stock exchange, the sky, customers, and pedestrians. All are observed at a distance, with care, in the newest work by Jem Cohen.

The memory of a person, or the memory of a place (Rhys Graham).

An observational portrait of London’s Essex Street, and the inhabitants who work the shops and throng the pavement there (Julie Murray).

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...

Jem Cohen brings the same meditative elegance and intellectual curiosity he did to Museum Hours (2012) with his stargazing new feature, again using...

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

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

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

Collaboration with Fugazi

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

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

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

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...

Commissioned by Renew Media to celebrate 20th Anniversary of Media Arts Fellowships

An erotic music video and short film about skinny-dipping.

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

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

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

"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...

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...