A Conversation with Jem Cohen
Since the 1980s, filmmaker Jem Cohen has made a name for himself through his prolific body of work, which has taken several forms, from observational, landscape-focused nonfiction films, like his feature film Counting, to intimate portraits of musicians, such as his Fugazi doc Instrument or Lucky Three: A Portrait of Elliott Smith. His most recent feature film, Little, Big, and Far, which premiered at the New York Film Festival, blends narrative and documentary to probe the mysteries of the cosmos. Ahead of a special one-night screening at Metrograph hosted by This Long Century, focused on Cohen’s music-based films, I spoke to the artist about the style and politics of his work.
You’ve got a screening coming up at Metrograph centered on your music-based films. Music-making has been a focus in so much of your work. I’m curious about what albums–along with what films–were formative for you when you were younger.
What albums—let’s see. I think the first record I remember owning and loving was Exile on Main Street and a Creedence Clearwater Revival record that some relative gave us when I was a kid. Music’s always been important…I listened to a lot of different kinds of music when I was growing up. I loved Jimi Hendrix from the get-go, and my parents were listening to Aretha Franklin and soul music and folk music. I was brought up with Woody Guthrie.
What linkage do you think that has to the work you started to make?
When I was in high school in D.C. punk rock hit, and that was a life-changer for me and everyone I knew. But I wasn’t a musician, so I had to find other ways to be involved. I started making flyers and doing still photographs, and as the years went by, I started to document, first in silent Super 8, and then to collaborate with musicians and bands. My senior thesis in college was a slideshow with music and then a film that had an Everly Brothers song in it and a Gun Club song in it. It was always a major force. As the years went by, there was really too much music in film, in regards to scores, in particular. I made Museum Hours with no score, just a couple songs that Mary Margaret O'Hara sings, so I’m not one who necessarily associates films with music, although I think that the possibilities are endlessly interesting. I also think they’re kind of complicated and difficult to attend to them with a real…I don’t know…to attend to them and give them both their due.
Museum Hours trailer (2013)
So there’s a great intention, you’d say, as to when you use music in your films as opposed to when you don’t.
Yeah. Although, if I’m shooting on the street and a car goes by playing hip-hop, I’d be happy to catch that and would have no intention to have caused it. I think it’s really perilous in film, for obvious reasons, which is that score is usually used to tell people how they feel and tell people what is about to happen, and why would you want to do that? I felt from early on that there was a complicated challenge, which is basically to make an even playing field where neither the music or the image are entirely dominant. Occasionally I do feel that I like to let the music or the sound be dominant, but it’s a choice, and it’s a measured choice.
I heard somewhere that some of your footage, probably early on when you were making Super 8, was shown as an accompaniment to R.E.M.’s benefit concerts?
Oh, I did years and years of work with R.E.M. I did about six videos with them and also toured and made films that were background projections, which was a really pretty extraordinary situation, because they had a lot of independent filmmakers making things and I was able to blow up Super 8 films to 35mm and I was even able to blow up 16mm to 70mm and they were projecting in film, with large projectors. It was quite beautiful and it’s a pretty strange feeling to shoot something with a Super 8 camera and then see it projected at Madison Square Garden for 20,000 people. That was an opportunity, and it was also an interesting investigation. But it was also kind of a large scale enterprise, with a lot of apparatus of the kind of rock and roll machine, although I was fond of the band, I wasn’t always entirely comfortable with a machine of that scope and scale. So after R.E.M. I ended up connecting with Godspeed You! Black Emperor and I’ve done films for them for twenty years. They exclusively play in darkened rooms with 16mm projections from usually four projectors, combining loops and films. That’s much more homegrown and a little closer to my punk rock roots.
Well, R.E.M. was like, the biggest band in the world when you were working with them.
Well, they weren’t the biggest band in the world, but they were a big, big band. And you know, that gave them a lot of opportunities. You had to be a very big band if you were going to tour with maybe four or five 35mm projectors and a 70mm projector. For them to be able to tap relatively little-known independent filmmakers and say, let’s come up with some interesting images, what do you want to do? I would do things like go to a hospital and have them X-ray various objects and then film those…it was wonderful. And it had some very moving moments in the concert. So I love that, but again, I came from a world that was much more about doing things in a more rag-tag, off-the-cuff way, in much smaller rooms. That’s something that I just needed to return to.
“E-Bow The Letter” - R.E.M. video (1996)
Your video for “Bella Ciao,” with Tom Waits, was shot in D.C. around the time of the first Trump inauguration. It’s a really moving statement of resistance against fascism. There was a lot of talk in 2016 that his presidency would usher in a great wave of resistance art. That didn’t happen. I’m curious about how you feel about what potential art has to make an honest difference.
A couple of clarifications—that was commissioned as a Marc Ribot video that Tom Waits kindly sang on Marc’s version, which was done for an album that Marc put out called Songs of Resistance. So given that context, it made sense for me to go full-out with it being a political engagement with current American matters. It actually came out of and shares a few shots with a film I did on my own at that inauguration called Birth of a Nation. So first I did the independent film, then when Marc asked if I could do some videos for him, I actually ended up doing two. I showed him the Birth of a Nation short and asked if I could kind of reinterpret it, and then I shot the other protests that ended up in it. I went and shot downtown where Homeland Security had its kind of kingdom. Then the other piece I did for Marc, for the same record, he did a collaboration with Meshell Ndegeocello called “Militant Ecologist.”
I was happy to do those, and I’ve always considered myself a political filmmaker. But if I’m going to be really straight up with you about…you know…art and politics…I don’t really think that that the primary function of art should be to “make change” in the way that that’s usually interpreted. In other words, I think it should ideally make change, but that change could be blowing one person’s mind rather than making a tool that is part of a political agenda. I have a lot of qualms with propaganda film and I have a lot of qualms with the current attitudes about political art-making. I don’t think we can be telling artists what they have to do. I can’t imagine…not incorporating political engagement with some of my work, but I also don’t want anybody telling me that I need to make their kind of political work any more than I want people telling me I need to make their kind of corporate work. I don’t think that artists should necessarily prioritize issue-oriented filmmaking. But it’s a complicated…long discussion, except to say that…people need to do what they need to do. If somebody needs to make abstract paintings that don’t have explicit political content, then that may be what they need to do, and I’ve seen some very wonderful artists and paintings that they’ve made along those lines. But sometimes those artists are very political people engaged in other ways.
I think a lot of art that foregrounds its politics can tend to be constricted and formulaic and I don’t necessarily love it. By the same token, I think it’s very strange to feel that anything can be disengaged from politics. The street that we walk on is determined by politics, the food that we eat is determined by politics, the people that we are able to love is affected by politics. It’s always present. So to some degree, to engage with life is to engage with politics, and then also there’s the question of form. If the form is radical, then that’s inherently political. If the subject is political but the form is predictable or formulaic, then I question whether the work can be that politically effective. I see a lot of political work that to me is made like advertising. Some people feel like if we’re going to be effective toward making change or making some agenda, then we should do the most effective thing. In our culture, the culture has seem to have decided that maybe the most effective thing is advertising. I don’t give a fuck about political work that smells like advertising. I just feel like that’s—but…you know, we’re getting sidetracked here, and I don’t want to go on a tirade about it, but I was very happy to make those collaborative works with Marc Ribot. I worked with Fugazi for ten years making Instrument. In the case of something like that project, the band only played benefits in their hometown of Washington, D.C. which meant countless benefits with hundreds of thousands of dollars raised in a very low-profile way, where the band didn’t need to boast about it or do press releases about it, and it was often like, a senior center or a local clinic. The way that politics are engaged now often does have aspects of what is called “virtue signaling.” It’s kind of a drag. Godspeed You! Black Emperor, they’re very political people who are making instrumental music.
I mean, take the title of their most recent album. [No Title as of 13 February 2024 28,340 Dead, a reference to the death toll in Gaza at the time.]
That was important to them, and it’s important to me, and moving, but somebody could just make an argument, “Why aren’t you singing political lyrics?” People need to attend to these things the way they need to attend to them. And I don’t think it’s healthy for people to be pressuring artists or musicians to do things in one set way because that fulfills somebody’s agenda.
You mentioned form. A few of your films like Lucky Three or Instrument, or some of your films of Jim White, feature live performance. How does the experience of shooting live performance differ for you from something that’s scripted with a narrative?
For one thing, I’m prioritizing an actuality that is—here’s this musician, what do they do, let’s watch them do it. To do that in an in-depth and respectful and durational way is very interesting to me, and it’s political. It’s a political act. I made Lucky Three when music video was at its heyday and the only thing people wanted to see was very…high-concept, MTV-oriented…advertisements. Which were not going under the name of advertisements, but that’s essentially what they were. So when I did Lucky Three, people said to me, “This is so weird, why would anybody want to sit and watch this guy play for that long?” And I was like, “Well…first of all…it’s beautiful to watch him sit and play, he’s very good at what he does, and if you just watch, then you might just listen.” But at the time, it was very against the grain. We don’t see that now, because luckily, once digital came along, people were able to do those kinds of documents much more readily. At that time, it was actually somewhat unusual.
To sit and watch a performer.
To sit and just watch what the hell they do. And not try to be clever about it or impose a story on it, not come up with some cute concept, not force them to wear some crazy costume that the musician didn’t really want to be wearing. And most of all, to not make them lip-sync. Lip-sync was an absolutely dominant mode of music documentation in the form of music video. And music video was dominant. So again, things change with formats and mediums and now there’s a million wonderful Youtube videos of people just playing. If I’m going to watch something on the internet, probably the best thing I can watch is—I was just watching something from the label Sahel Sounds, some women in Niger playing blues in an open-air setting, and it’s very much just watching and listening, observational, and it’s very powerful and beautiful. That sort of thing is not so rare anymore, but I think when I made Lucky Three I could feel that it was seen as kind of strangely static and an unappealing choice.
And then, of course, we didn’t realize that Elliott wasn’t going to be around forever. This is something I think about all the time. Do I want to watch a Nirvana video where they’re lip-syncing? No. It’s insulting to the band. Sorry. I would much rather watch a couple minutes of them performing live even if it’s a shitty recording and see what they actually did as musicians. Now, there are exceptions, I don’t always just want to be on this high horse. There are wonderful music videos that are creative and interesting. I can think of a few. People find ways to do things creatively and I’m not laying down the law. Frankly, I give this spiel all the time. I end up on a tirade about music video. But in reality, it was a very influential, restrictive, and largely grotesque entity—MTV. People are kind of nostalgic, “Remember when MTV actually played music videos?” I don’t even know if they exist anymore, but no, actually, when they played music videos, what they did is—except for a tiny window at the beginning when they didn’t even have enough stuff to fill their programming hours and they were interesting about it, as soon as they locked into their formulas, it was a parade of sexist, stupid bullshit that got a lot of bands in debt. Because the bands were forced to make them—
And put on a show.
And put on a show, and a lot of musicians felt embarrassed and used, but they felt like they had to do it. I don’t have a lot of fondness for that kind of industry. I think they were bullies.
Well, Lucky Three is…there’s an earnestness to it. And it’s really just one of my favorite things…ever.
Thank you. It’s one of my favorite things, and it was a very simple, pleasant, project. I did it very independently, it was not at the behest of the label, or Elliott, I was actually shooting for Fugazi, so I had my sync-sound camera in the Pacific Northwest and I jumped off of that train and I just reached out to Elliott and at the time he was on an independent label, and they were helpful as well, but they hadn’t commissioned it, but they were welcoming. I’d met Elliott before, but what I did was just a very bare-bones thing. I love this music, I love what this guy does. Let’s watch him do it. And then I’d say, “Hey, let’s go around Portland to places that matter to you.” So it was very simple and it was a sweet experience. Now I’m very thankful to have the record.
Stills from Lucky Three: A Portrait of Elliott Smith (1997)
Your most recent film, Little, Big, and Far, which I saw at the New York Film Festival—I reviewed it for Reverse Shot, I liked it a lot—
That was a very kind review and I thank you for it.
Thanks. The film had a lot of free jazz in it. Free jazz feels in line with the fiction/non-fiction free-flowingness of your work. There’s a tension between order and disorder. Would you agree with that?
Absolutely. I think that’s exactly what I was reaching for, but I was reaching for it because of the science. I felt very strongly that if I was going to deal with the actualities of physics and astronomy, then I wanted to try to find ways to investigate those subjects. It was very interesting to me to think about what kind of music was usually played in documentaries or films dealing with the cosmos, versus what I thought would be more accurate. Free jazz entails dealing with chaos and order and the thin line between them, so it was really maybe an appropriate way to think about the cosmos, which is very destructive as well as unimaginably chaotic, but also unimaginably empty sometimes, but also not really empty any time. There’s a lot of contradicting.
And it’s always generating.
It’s always generating, except that there can be billions of years in a particular place where it seems like nothing is happening. (Laughs) Anyway, I went into Little, Big, and Far thinking I wouldn’t use much music, and then I heard this extraordinary track by a cellist in the improv world, and that track sat beautifully for one of the pivotal scenes. Then, I had been working for years with the drummer Jim White, the drummer who played in a lot of bands I love, Dirty Three and Cat Power and PJ Harvey. Jim was doing a lot of investigation on his own, and had put out a solo record, and he also works with this extraordinary lute player from Crete, Giorgos Xylouris in [the band] Xylouris White, I’ve been hanging out and doing projects with those people, especially Jim and George for years now, and I started to play around with their music. It opened some doors for me because sometimes you don’t notice that there’s any music, but the drums are in there, actually not in the background at all, but they don’t necessarily feel like music or score. It’s very interesting. John and Alice Coltrane, of course, was pivotal in the film as well. It’s another situation where I make a rule for myself that I don’t want a bunch of score in my film and then I end up feeling like I don’t want to be tight when I might need to get loose. And maybe getting loose means reaching for some music. It’s an ongoing way for me to be with musicians and listen more carefully and also to make music with pictures. Even when there isn’t music there, it can help me with that.
So the night at Metrograph is a way to foreground the tangling that I like to do with [music.] Including the Jim White thing, called The Double, it’s never shown in New York, and it is kind of challenging. It’s not necessarily going to go over that well but I think the documentation is suited [for it.]
I think it might go over pretty well.
Maybe. You never know. But I like the challenge of it in the same way that I often like being challenged in terms of cinema. Anyway, it’s a celebration to put things on a big screen. Most of these works have never shown in that context. It’s very transformative to get people to sit in the dark and look at this big presence and listen to it with such fullness. We really need to be reminded to do that. We’re so used to going small on the internet. And it’s nice that it’s a collaboration with Jason from This Long Century. I really respect that website. I was, I think, number 100 of their invited contributors and it’s a really rare example of a web phenomenon that has been absolutely clear and simple, there’s no ads or shenanigans. It sticks to its thing in the most respectful way and it’s really fascinating to check out what’s on there. And Jason deserves credit for maintaining that as a kind of pure entity. I hope it’ll be invigorating in these dark times.
Selected works by Jem Cohen will be screening at Metrograph at 7pm on December 20th, followed by a conversation with Jason Evans.
