Over Your Cities Grass Will Grow (2010)

New York has many art house cinemas. I tried Film Forum in central Manhattan, and was extremely impressed with the documentary I saw, Over your cities grass will grow. The mere fact that a slow film like this gets several screeenings every days for many weeks is just mindblowing, if you come from a country like Finland, where this would perhaps be broadcasted on TV (maybe it will) - but in a real cinema? Never. Interestingly, I hadn't even heard about the artist, Anselm Kiefer, whose work is on display in this film. But make no mistake, this is not a portrait of Kiefer the artist. It is not so easy to explain what this is - a meditation on art as work/labor, perhaps. What you see here is the locations in southern France Kiefer uses for his art. He has built tunnels and mazes, huge installations, rooms, cities. In the first section of the film, the camera slowly traces some of these locations. Ligeti's music is used in several places of the film, and the effect is stunning. The film also follows Kiefer and his assistents in their daily toil with making art. But this is not the images you usually think of when hearing the word art. What you see here bears a closer resemblance to a noisy industrial or building site. From Ligeti's dissonant music we are transported to the sounds of scraping, breaking glass, hammering, noisy bulldozers and cranes, riveting. The transition from music to sound does not seem forced at all. There are also a few snippets of interviews. But these are quirky and even funny, as is true also for some of the moments at the art locations. I had no problem with not getting a wider picture of how Kiefer conceives his art. Instead of him telling us, the film shows us what it is like to spend many, many hours on a specific art project. And herein lies the originality of the film. In most film, we get an elevated image of art as Work, I mean, as Things in Museums. Here, instead, art is work, labor, fixing, commanding, correcting, shouting. I think Sophie Fienne, the director of this film, made a few very wise choices when she edited the material. The result could have been annoyingly Contemplative, perhaps presenting a romantic picture of Art as Craft. But we never end up here. Besides showing an interesting dimension of art, Over your cities grass will grow is an achingly beautiful film. This is the beauty of soil, broken glass, coarse materials, dust. I can't really decide whether I like these quieter moments better than the funny, nonsensical ones (e.g. most of the interviews, look out for the Heidegger lecture / spotting a dozing cat in the midst of this very noisy art work). Don't miss out on this film.