New York City 'Ghetto' Fish Market (1903)

User Rating:

5.2/10   

Release Date:

May 1903 (USA)

Genre:

Documentary | Short

Plot:

A fine panoramic view of this busy market on a Friday morning. Immense throngs of people are passing along the stands and making their purchases of fish. A great character-study. - from the Edison Catalog

Plot Keywords:

Fish | Market | New York City | Jewish Ghetto | Merchant

Runtime:

USA:2 min (2004 National Film Preservation Foundation print)

Country:

USA

Color:

Black and White

Sound Mix:

Silent

Certification:

USA:Not Rated

Filming Locations:

New York City, New York, USA

Company:

Edison Manufacturing Company

Trivia:

One of the 50 films in the 3-disk boxed DVD set called "More Treasures from American Film Archives, 1894-1931" (2004), compiled by the National Film Preservation Foundation from 5 American film archives. This film is preserved by the Library of Congress, has a running time of 2 minutes and an added piano music score.

Ken Jacobs' Version

"Well, I usually take short lengths of film and pore over them, or pour into them. Dig into them. So it's mining. And I'm looking for things that literally you just don't see when it zips by at 24 frames per second, normal sound speed. Film is a relation of frame to frame to frame, and I am also declaring relations of one frame with another frame. I want to see what can be done between those two frames and then, maybe frame A and frame B, and then frame B frame C. Okay? It definitely is a dig. What I'm after, of course, is vital, interesting, amusing, crazy-making stuff." -Ken Jacobs

This is a new visual take on some very old (Thomas Edison) filmic material. Few examples like it exist, if any at all, in the NetFlix catalog. The only other place you'll find entertainments such as this one is at a major museum of modern art.

It's unfortunate, but at this phase in time, New York Fishmarket Ghetto communicates specifically and expressly to an elite viewer and, having it there, on NetFlix, throws the film itself into a state of disorientation while it is distributed as an anomalous cultural artifact in a non-elite venue, thus slaking its traditional place in the web of relations we call the world.

Interpretations are useless, however, I urge the curious viewer not familiar with the work and goals of Ken Jacobs to have a confrontation New York Gehtto Fishmarket 1903 and take some its valuable lessons with him next time he is settling in with a classical realist narrative film. Excellent. (But not for epileptics).