HomeFilmsDocumentary

THE MARVELLING LENS
16min, 2004

Director: Rowena Cohen

Director of Photography: Stuart Biddlecombe
Sound Designer: Miha Jaramaz
Editor: Jane Hodge
Composer: Richard Chester

Synopsis: “He was an older man with the face of a tired actor. He had evolved over a legendary number of documents, glass plate negatives, prints, album, books…..but what documents! With the marvelling lens of dream and surprise, for thirty odd years Atget photographed the whole of Paris. These are not the albums of an artist then bequeathed to libraries…no, these are the visions of a poet handed down to poets.” Robert Desnos, Surrealist poet Eugene Atget’s photographs of the banal and the everyday are magnificently transformed into eerily ethereal boulevards, strange and fantastical shop fronts and spooky phantoms that haunt the streets. Does his Paris, full of magic, nostalgia and lyricism still exist or has it disappeared forever?

Rowena Cohen

Rowena Cohen graduated with a Degree in Drama & Dance from Middlesex Polytechnic and took up a career in the theatre as a performer and director. This eventually led to experimenting with short fiction and documentary filmmaking. Further study via a Masters in video led her to apply to the National Film & Television School where she has made a diverse number of shorts ranging from comically endangered fruit in Angst to a deeply reflective look in Hokey Cokey Stokey at the civilian casualties of the Second World War in her neighbourhood of Stoke Newington.

Rowena is interested in all types of filmmaking, be it fiction or documentary, and all subjects. Theatricality is a strong element of her work as is the desire to make films that resonate with a strong emotional and visual impact.

FILMOGRAPHY-NFTS FILMS
Hokey Cokey Stokey
Angst
Corpsicles
The Marvelling Lens

FILMOGRAPHY-PRE NFTS
Toilet
It’s Life Brian….But Not As We Know It
Babble
Mesmerized

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