Free Time + Statues Hardly Ever Smile

Manfred Kirchheimer is one of the great masters of the American city symphony, as is clear from films like Stations of the Elevated (1981) and Dream of a City (2018). In his last film, the 88-year-old Kirchheimer meticulously restored and constructed 16mm black- and-white footage that he and Walter Hess shot in New York between 1958 and 1960. This lustrous evocation of slow New York City captures the in-between moments—kids playing stickball, window washers, folks reading newspapers on their stoops—and the architectural beauty of urban spaces, set to the stirring sounds of Ravel, Bach, Eisler, and Count Basie.

Featuring an introduction by Jake Perlin, the Film Desk.

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Statues Hardly Ever Smile (1971) Dir. Stan Lathan

Shot by St. Clair Bourne and edited by poet, playwright, and filmmaker Kathleen Collins, this short film directed by Stan Lathan follows a six-week project at the Brooklyn Museum in which students are left to freely engage with the museum’s Egyptian collection, and then collectively create a piece of theater that captures their interactions with the objects. 

Collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, Gift of Pearl Bowser.