Rain

Joris Ivens, 1929, Amsterdam in a rain shower: gutters, bicycles, a canal that becomes a mirror, umbrellas as a flock. Fourteen minutes, no plot, the city as a weather system. Shot with Mannus Franken. It is the Dutch city symphony, quieter than Ruttmann, wetter than Vertov, and it taught a generation of documentarians that you could make a film out of looking at pavement. The rain is the editor.