This Long Century Presents: Ari Marcopoulos

Director: Ari Marcopoulos

2021 / 79min / Digital

A program of selected short films by Marcopoulos, a photographer, filmmaker, and tireless chronicler of subcultures in New York City and points further afield. Includes Roma, a portrait of daily life in the Italian capital; Sketches for #PUNK, intercutting choreographer Nora Chipaumire’s rehearsals for a performance with the kinetic footwork of basketball players on a neighborhood court; Alone Together, documenting a poetry reading and saxophone performance by avant-garde jazz legend Joe McPhee at LAXART in Los Angeles; two shorts attesting to Marcopoulos’s ongoing engagement with hip-hop culture; Hammons Flute, in which musician David Hammons is seen playing a traditional Japanese flute, the shakuhachi, in his Harlem studio; and further surprises.

“Much like Ari’s practice of putting together zines, often produced in small runs, self-published and distributed amongst friends, the films gathered here are both raw and immediate. Encounters, which range from glimpses of daily street life, basketball games, dance rehearsals, artists at work in the studio, intimate family moments and unplugged performances. While moving between formats, and a wide cast of people and places, Ari’s disarmingly simple observations remain a thread throughout, revealing a record of shared humanity which feels both down to earth yet profound.” —Jason Evans, This Long Century

Photographer and filmmaker Ari Marcopoulos in conversation with This Long Century co-founder and editor Jason Evans on Saturday, April 5th