A Taxi Driver, an Architect and the High Line

New York continues to occupy a special place in our collective  imaginations, it is probably one of the cities most presented and  represented in film production. But the A taxi driver, an architect and the High Line project does not connect directly to that imagination.

It chooses the body as a prism through which to read the city, the  body placed in space, the movement and its rhythm revealing in its  negative space that of the city, its architecture. Physical presence,  walking and dance sharpen our gaze and allow us to discreetly highlight  certain movemnts in the city, its masses and transformations.

A taxi driver, an architect and the High Line is a trilogy, a portrait of the city through three characters, their relationships to the space and to its architecture.

The first two characters are a taxi driver (Philip Moore) and an  architect (Rick Bell). The third character is a landmark, the High Line.  We consider the High Line metaphorically as someone who travels daily  through the city, revealing it, bringing about encounters between people  and their personal stories.

The films are a collection of physical memories,  intimate stories and spaces. Each film veers between fiction,  documentary, performance and poetry.

We entered into a dialogue with each of the  protagonists, seeking the chronology of their physical memories, their  personal histories. Gestures, movements, trajectories were identified  and re-launched in the city, placed in their normal context or  displaced. Each action is part of the dialogue with the context,  triggering a reading of the space from the space of the body. In  counterpoint, the perspective on the city focuses on everyday  activities, gestures linked to work, to the rhythm of the city.

The project confronts the reality of spaces and actions.