"Berlin: Symphony Of A Great City" January 14, 2009

French poet Charles Baudelaire famously theorized the flaneur, or urban vagabond "who walks the city in order to experience it". L.A.'s decentralized sprawl makes life difficult for the flaneur, which is perhaps why we are thankful for films like Berlin: Symphony of a Great City. A vast, restless celebration of urban life in Weimar Germany, Walter Ruttman's masterwork is perhaps the most poetic of the great "City Symphony" films--it feels like it was edited with a glass of wine and a notebook, not a flatbed and a pair of scissors. Unfolding in five acts, Berlin's documentary depictions of work, transportation, relaxation, and night life teem with life and photographic creativity. Ruttman's fluid editing pairs the dynamic pace of modern life with the bottomless curiosity of the wide-eyed observer. It's as much as a love song as a symphony. The film's live score will be provided by Long Beach avant-jazz group Free Moral Agents, featuring keyboardist Ikey Owens (The Mars Volta).