jasonverlaine

One of the best films of this decade so far is Jose Luis Guerin's IN THE CITY OF SYLVIA, a film that is sadly without theatrical or digital distribution in the US. One of the most brilliant sequences in the film is a 15 minute long stretch in which the film's protagonist (not pictured below) sits at a cafe with a sketch pad watching the people go about their day. I have decided to turn this sequence into a blog post because I think it captures an essential part of the cinematic going experience; watching people who do not know they are being watched as they emote and show parts of their personality through their face. People are layered in front of people and your eye is focused in a way that exemplifies pure cinema. The viewer/protagonist is indicted in the voyeurism three times with jarring direct eye contact. Here is the sequence in 39 pictures, chronologically as they appear within the film...

(Ugh, I can't figure out how to make these automatically resize to fit window as they do when posted in a group. So they are huge and cropped, click "View Image" to see the image in full. Please let me know if there is a way I can fix this.)