"...the images of CONTINUUM certainly haunt me: there was the softest continual casualness of editing (beseeming "casualness", I should say; for I certainly DO know how difficult this is to accomplish), and a steadiness-of rhythm, always moving/moving but never as anything ominous to me, or inexorable something more like very heavy water lapping.
City Symphony
City Symphony is a series of films shot in 16mm by Dominic Angerame during the years 1987-1997.
'His five-part City Symphony, made between 1987 and 1997, the title of which is derived from the famous 1927 Walter Ruttman film , and which formally stands in the tradition of Dziga Vertov’s urban-industrial montage. Angerame’s city films show (urban) destruction and (cinematic) construction as two sides of the same coin: as de-construction even. To see the city through Angerame’s eyes, writes Silke Tudor, is 'to see an organic beast of cement that seems to breathe in rich shades of black and white.' --Stefan Grissemann
Works in this series
1 - Continuum (1987) |
 2 - Deconstruction Sight (1990)"A somber, gong-like tone opens DECONSTRUCTION SIGHT: the first image is a small light in darkness, a delicate flicker that grows to become a welder's torch. We are led into the film by a suggestive imagistic shorthand: 'the rise of man' is attended by the building of structures, and cities, a montage of the emblems of civilization. |
 3 - Premonition (1995)"There's an exquisite despair and a dooming ambiguity suspended in the cool morning clarity of Dominic Angerame's new film, PREMONITION. It's short and bittersweet, like a prelude by Debussy, and promises a broad integration of the aesthetic elements of his work. ... But ... |
 4 - In the Course of Human Events (1997)After the 1989 quake the city of San Francisco decided to tear down the Embarcadero Freeway once and for all. The climate of dread evoked by PREMONITION is followed by a primitive yet seductive "tableau" of twisted metal. The bulldozers are prehistoric monsters that tear bits of metal and stone from the vulnerable concrete. |
5 - Line of Fire (1997)In November of 1993 I was diagnosed as having coronary arterial disease. A subsequent angiogram revealed that open heart surgery was necessary - it was almost immediately performed. This angiogram was filmed originally on 35mm motion picture film. |
 6 - The Soul of Things (2010)Film made by Dominic Angerame in 2010. Synopsis Nothing is apparent to ordinary vision until it is painted upon the window of the soul' --William Denton 1866 |