Abstract

Joris Ivens’s Rain, a portrait of rainfall in Amsterdam completed in 1929, is an essential work in the development of the poetic documentary. This video essay tours Ivens’s strategies for editing many months of observation into this archetypal rainstorm, such as match cuts and other compositional parallels, his structuring of raindrops in the canals as a refrain intercut with images of sky, crowds and gutters. As a remix of Ivens’s film, "Rain: A Phenomenal Catalogue" explores his central gesture, to picture a city blanketed in reflections.

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