Jem Cohen Trailers
4:44 (from her house home) Trailer
Born in Afghanistan, Jem Cohen is an American experimental filmmaker and photographer, especially known for his observational portraits of urban landscapes, blending of media formats, and collaborations with musicians.
Cohen has worked extensively with musicians including Patti Smith, Fugazi, Terry Riley, R.E.M., Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Xylouris White, DJ Rupture, the Ex, Elliott Smith, Vic Chesnutt, Mary Margaret O’Hara, Matana Roberts, Jessica Moss, Jonathan Richman, T.Griffin/Catherine McRae, White Magic, and the Orpheus Orchestra with Gil Shaham, and has collaborated with writers Luc Sante and Sam Stephenson, and graphic artist Ben Katchor.
Most Popular Jem Cohen Trailers
Total trailers found: 66
01 January 1999
A portrait of an unnamed city in Italy. Sidestepping the tourist attractions that make the city famous, the film/video posits an almost-imaginary place that draws closer to the reality of its inhabitants.
04 May 2009
A short portrait of Patti Smith in the city where she lives. Patti recites the very first poem-song she ever wrote.
01 January 1991
Sketches for Late City Final (Jem Cohen, Peter Hutton, Jeff Preiss, Adam Grossman Cohen, co-produced by Fred Riedel, c.
18 April 1986
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 gang of thieves in a nearby town.
28 August 1987
Filmed in the coal country of West Virginia, "Matewan" celebrates labor organizing in the context of a 1920s work stoppage.
19 November 2002
A short musical film
23 October 2003
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 Warner Bros.
26 October 2001
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.
21 March 2006
Moving towards an unknown destination, a group of anonymous passengers float through an unidentifiede
22 August 2004
In Chain, actual malls, theme parks, hotels and corporate centers worldwide are joined into a monolithic superlandscape that shapes and circumscribes the lives of two women.
01 January 1989
Collaboration with Fugazi
01 February 1995
An erotic music video and short film about skinny-dipping.
01 January 2016
A portrait of Peter Hutton.
01 July 2009
Chinatown is an evocative place. It exists in our cities, in our imaginations, on our television screens, and in our memories.
08 August 2012
A security guard working at an art museum in Vienna crosses paths with a Canadian woman in town to visit her ailing cousin.
21 March 1989
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 simple mysteries.
27 June 1997
Unreleased silent Super 8 film, shot in the mid 1990s; an early precursor to Museum Hours.
01 January 2013
A sudden rainstorm, 6th Avenue at West Fourth, NYC. That's all.
01 January 2009
Chance observations of New York's Chinatown, commissioned by the Museum of Chinese in the Americas. “A sleepwalker’s circumnavigation of one of the less homogenized parts of the city.
01 January 2016
An observational portrait of London’s Essex Street, and the inhabitants who work the shops and throng the pavement there (Julie Murray).
15 January 2010
A portrait of artist Anne Truitt made primarily in and around her studio at the Yaddo artists' community.
15 September 2011
Cohen, who witnessed the New York occupation from day one, borrowed a digital camera and started gathering footage in subsequent weeks.
27 April 2007
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.
01 January 2016
This film is closely related to my last featurelength project, COUNTING. I take the temperature of a neighborhood.
01 January 1989
The memory of a person, or the memory of a place (Rhys Graham).
19 September 1991
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 composition.
01 January 2008
"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 performing comrades.
01 January 1999
A portrait of Catania, Sicily. Includes the ocean at 5 a.m., the fish market, the distributor of pornographic films, the woodworker, the elephant statue, housing projects, and a young girl in an orange sweater.
07 April 2018
The stock exchange, the sky, customers, and pedestrians. All are observed at a distance, with care, in the newest work by Jem Cohen.
14 October 2014
A collection of films from an eclectic array of contributors commissioned to raise funds for the Bristol independent cinema The Cube.
31 October 2016
A portrait of Southend-on-Sea, a town along England's Thames estuary, that includes everyday streets, people, birds, water, mud and sky.
13 February 2012
Since 1995, the Viennale has invited renowned directors to create short, one-minute films as personal contributions to the festival.
30 April 2026
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 for a small island in hopes of finding a sky dark enough to reconnect with the stars.
21 March 2006
An unorthodox concert film of the Holland-based band, the Ex, playing in New York. Intercut with city footage and documentation of anti-war, anti-Bush demonstrations.
31 December 2018
Hardcore punk legend Ian MacKaye (Fugazi, Minor Threat) discusses memorable experiences from the many live shows he’s played.
31 December 2008
An homage to Walter Benjamin and other time-traveling artists and expatriates that have inspired me, especially Chris Marker.
24 September 1991
This 50-minute release features promotional videos to the band's four singles from Out of Time ('Losing My Religion', 'Shiny Happy People', 'Near Wild Heaven' and 'Radio Song') in addition to videos to the album tracks 'Low', 'Belong', 'Half A World Away' and 'Country Feedback'; an acoustic performance of 'Losing My Religion' from The Late Show; and a live acoustic performance of 'Love Is All Around' from MTV Unplugged.
08 July 1997
Described as "a cross between a video and a documentary, but actually being neither of the two", singer/songwriter Elliott Smith plays three acoustic songs in this Jem Cohen-directed short film.
13 August 2024
Jem Cohen directs a music video for the post-rock song “Aerie” by drummer Jim White (of Dirty Three) and guitarist Marisa Anderson.
21 September 2018
"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 relentless to grave and dreamy.
31 July 2015
An associative collection of visual impressions across fifteen chapters: a seagull in Porto, political posters in New York, an abstract painting in St.
01 March 1999
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 fans.
08 October 2020
Jem Cohen directs this video for the post-rock song “Opened Ending” by Jessica Moss.
12 August 2000
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 footage years later.
25 May 2019
Jem Cohen's memory-tribute to Jonas Mekas displaces its first-person narration from voice-over to on-screen text.
12 September 2025
Scenes from the life of a quiet man and a smart woman. They carry the celebrated surnames Frank and Leaf, both of which were crucial to the 20th century North American art scene, but here they are just Robert and June.
21 March 1994
A meditation on history, memory, and change in Central and Eastern Europe, Buried in Light is a non-narrative journey, a cinematic collage.
25 May 2007
Commissioned by Renew Media to celebrate 20th Anniversary of Media Arts Fellowships
13 September 2000
Benjamin Smoke is the highly acclaimed documentary by directors Jem Cohen and Peter Sillen on legendary underground musician Benjamin Smoke.
11 June 1996
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 meditation on city life.
21 March 1987
A history of New York City from Prehistoric times through the Space Age, composed entirely from documentary street footage.
20 February 2017
In "Birth of a Nation", Jem Cohen takes his camera to Donald Trump’s presidential inauguration and to the next day’s protests.
29 October 2022
An unorthodox essay film on the renowned but controversial painter, Philip Guston. Ballad interweaves Guston's biography, influences, and philosophical approach to art with Cohen's deeply personal engagement with the man and his work.
01 January 2010
A portrait of Luce Vigo, film critic, educator, and the daughter of pivotal French filmmaker Jean Vigo.
01 January 1989
A personal, poetic approach to narrative, originally shot on 8mm film and mastered to ¾” video. n
01 January 2011
The scene: the industrial neighborhood of Gowanus, Brooklyn. The players: wind, a flooded road, passersby, and birds.
21 March 2008
This surreal art-movie/live-performance hybrid is comprised of New York filmmaker Jem Cohen's original 16mm and DV movie footage combined with concert clips of Vic Chesnutt and members of Silver Mt.
01 January 2009
A collaboration between Jem Cohen with writer Luc Sante made in Tangier, Morocco, a city where neither of us had ever been.
