The Cinematheque

Ulysses in the Subway
USA 2017
Ken Jacobs, Flo Jacobs, Paul Kaiser, Marc Downie
61 min. DCP

A collaboration between experimental 3D maven Ken Jacobs, his wife Flo Jacobs, and Paul Kaiser and Marc Downie, two of the founding members of the acclaimed multidisciplinary collective OpenEndedGroup. Where most films privilege the image, merely applying sound as a means to enhance what we see, Ulysses in the Subway reverses this relationship, and tasks the image with describing what we hear. Working from a field recording captured by Ken as he travelled home to Flo via New York City’s labyrinthine subway network, Kaiser and Downie built the film’s visual palette through custom-made algorithms out of Ken’s soundscape. The detailed stereoscopic animations combine with the audio to craft a chaotic symphony of wavelengths, dancing before our ears and eyes. Ambient voices, machine noise, and pulses of urban life fill up this boundless arena and map out a voyage home that, like Odysseus’s return to Penelope, feels positively heroic.

Advisory: Ulysses in the Subway contains strobing effects that may affect photosensitive viewers.

preceded by

Around Is Around
Canada 1951
Norman McLaren, Evelyn Lambart
10 min. DCP

Featuring an orchestral score composed by Lou Applebaum, Around Is Around is a total rotary delight, taking viewers to a great beyond where galaxies and peculiar forms twirl and twist before us in a seductive, astral waltz.