Filmed in New York City and New Jersey between April and September 2025. Small changes made to the film, July 28, 2026.
While this film is finished save for a few possible final adjustments, it is not going to be posted in full for quite some time. The 50 4K films I have made up until now range from one and fifteen minutes; this one is 74. At least as of now I care about it more than anything else I have ever made or written. Therefore, I especially want it to be seen correctly, which is to say in high quality 4K projection on a reasonably large screen, and will do what I can to seek public showings. My attempts to do so with my existing films have failed, so this attempt may fail too, but at least I will try. You can see the first three minutes of the film here. (Airplanes are far more present here than in most of the film.)
It focuses on thirteen different bridges in New York City, two of which are also in New Jersey. "Focuses on" can include images taken from very near the bridge but which do not show it; very occasionally another bridge is shown instead. The thirteen bridges are accompanied by two "metaphorical" bridges, airplane flights from Chicago, where I live, to New York. In the choice of bridges, as in the compositions and editing and rhythms of nearly all my films, this film strives for a certain expansiveness, so that when one of the people I know who loves my work spoke of feeling a connection to Rossellini, it made me very happy.
The principal bridges:
By definition, a bridge connects two different parts of our planet, areas that would be more difficult to travel between without the bridge. If one wants to imagine that this function of bridges informs my film both aesthetically and ethically, serving as well as an inspiration for my editing choices, one would be correct.
This film depicts thirteen bridges. It is organized into 14 sections, each of similar length, each focusing on one of the 13 bridges or, in the first, on one of two different airplane flights from Chicago, where I live, to New York, where the work was filmed, two “additional” bridges as it were. These trips were two of the four I made in 2025 to shoot this film. Each physical bridge is located in New York City. Four are pedestrian-only bridges; five are small pedestrian and vehicle bridges; four are significantly larger than the other nine. I limited myself to only bridges that one can walk over, both for the aesthetic reason of not wanting to film only from a car and also for ethical reasons, as I consider cars-only bridges something of an ecological, and hence moral, abomination. Eleven of my bridges are entirely contained within the city; two are only partially so, their other sides being in New Jersey. Each of New York City’s five boroughs has at least one bridge situated entirely within its boundaries, and every borough is also represented by at least part of one other bridge. With the exception of two bridges that span the East River, the 59th Street Bridge and the 103rd Street Footbridge, each bridge crosses a different body of water, making 12 in all. If the reader detects a striving for various kinds of inclusiveness, the reader would be correct.
I classify images as being connected to each bridge rather liberally, including any image taken in the vicinity of the bridge, even if it does not depict it, and also images taken from the bridge which do not include any of the bridge’s structure, even if many of the images taken from each bridge do also include it. Hence, each of the images associated with a bridge does not always include the bridge itself, and New York City being what it is, many other bridges are also visible. In fact, a few images which I consider associated with a bridge are entirely of a different bridge, even if photographed with the associated bridge offscreen. “Associated” images do not only appear in the section connected to the bridge, but in other sections as well. The result is that it will generally be impossible to tell where one section ends and another begins, or even which bridge is the focus of a section. I hope that the result is a feeling of endless, even onrushing flow rather than an inventory of specific bridges.
I have tried, within reason, to treat many things equally, from stones to weeds to trees to buildings to animals to waters to the sky, also allowing myself a few biases. One would be a degree of anti-anthropocentrism; you will see that individual humans are not at the center here, nor in the great majority of my films. Another is a preference for bicycles over motorized vehicles, so that my portrayed city, in this film and in some others, will give the impression that there are more bicycles on the street than are actually present. This film, ostensibly about bridges, has aspects of the “city symphony” genre, but also tries to find in the New York area a synecdoche, however limited in its specifics, for much of the world. Behind that impulse is the encouragement, of myself and others, to think expansively, never to be restricted to a single object or person, to always be seeking widening contexts for every object. Along these lines, please also see my Statement 11.
This film is dedicated to a large number of my friends, all of whom helped with their friendship and care, in a few cases appearing in my photographic art work or films, many of whom helped enormously in my photographing and filming in different parts of the world, and a few of whom helped me far beyond reason in my bleakest of times — thereby saving my life. They include Pedro Accioly, Gabriel Almeida, Bruno Andrade, John Belton, Kian Bergstrom, Hisham Bizri, Amy Bodman, Marilyn Brakhage, Chris Camper, Francie Camper, Jennifer Camper, the late Lorraine Camper, Kyle Canterbury, Robert Edelstein, Amy Eyny, Mina Eyny, Yaniv Eyny, Jesse Farrell, Roy Gould, David Grosz, Tom Gunning, Felipe Herba, Anastasia Hischier, Arabella Hischier, Brian Hischier, Miles Hischier, Tim Hunter, Paul Kaiser, Liam Kenny, Sasha Kleinbart, Peter Kubelka, Devin Leong, Yoel Meranda, Jack Miller, Tommy Mintz, Russell Moore, Mike Prokosch, Troy Sherman, Jack Seibert, Giovanni Silveira, the late P. Adams Sitney, the late Warren Sonbert, David Sterritt, Scott Trotter, Kyle Westphal, the late Kirk Winslow, and Monika Wulfers.
One close friend, whom I will call "K," responded after viewing it:
Wow. Tremendous. Great. Last shot is amazing, from the image itself, the downward flow, to its extended duration. It should be a favorite among fc fans. For no logical reason I was skeptical before viewing it. Just because you announced it as special, and the fact that it was so much longer than the others, somehow made me dubious. That's happened before. And then I watched it. And ... OMG! I was constantly in suspense as to what the next shot would be, how it would interconnect with what preceded it and what would follow. I loved the unity of it all, the bridges seeming to me not so much leading from and to but rather between. Bridges as framing within the compositions, and the editing framing a world view, a flow that seemed at times to embrace all life, from the blades of grass to the man-made industrial sites, the bodies of water, the roadways. Loved all those shots of people (and sometimes ducks) with their images reflected in the water. The static images with cars whooshing past the frame, immersing the viewer more deeply in the sense of being there. Many memorable shots, but at the moment I think of the single shot with the most camera movements, panning up, across, down, back again, etc. And the still shot looking down on the line of waves coming to shore. The shots from within the moving plane (descending early on, the shaking towards the end) and the selection of clouds. Each having its own importance and impact but also crucially 'interacting' with the shots around it.