The films of Arthur Lipsett are softly apocalyptic assemblages of midcentury images and sounds—documentaries, street photographs, advertisements, interviews. In the classic Very Nice, Very Nice, hundreds of purloined moments spin past the eye at a jet-age clip: crowds march, highways sprawl, an atom bomb drops, children play, wrestlers grapple, audiences guffaw. Equally magpied, the soundtracks draw heavily on dialog from psychiatric films and religious oratory, continuously circling back to existential themes, collaged with jazz, spirituals, and ritual music.
