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A striking classic from an early documentary master explores Amsterdam in the rain

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In the experimental short documentary Regen (1929), the pioneering Dutch filmmaker Joris Ivens explores Amsterdam before, during and after a rainstorm, tracing an impressionistic arc through brief vignettes – rippling canals, seas of umbrellas, rising puddles, dripping windowsills. Shot over two years but giving the viewer an experience of a single event, the lyrical piece is an early film in Ivens’s influential and storied career, and a particularly poetic example of the ‘city symphony’, in which filmmakers aimed to distill the defining qualities of different urban environments. This restored version features a 1941 score from the Austrian composer Hanns Eisler titled Fourteen Ways to Describe Rain – a work he dedicated to his teacher Arnold Schoenberg.

Directors: Joris Ivens, Mannus Franken

Score: Hanns Eisler

19 January 2018
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