This footage by JoAnn Elam from 1973 first shows the roofs of apartment buildings and houses, trees, and tires from what appears to be a moving car driving on the streets of Chicago. As many elements in this collection demonstrate, Elam often used car rides as opportunities to film the city and to experiment with
This footage by JoAnn Elam was taken from a moving car on the highway near Chicago, where Elam lived for most of her life. Cars, lampposts, buildings, and the Chicago skyline in the distance come in and out of the frame, without the camera being able to control what it is filming. As in another
B/W Mich, NY + Mass starts with black and white shots of nature taken in the woods, possibly in Michigan or Monterey, MA, which JoAnn Elam visited often in the early 1980s. As in other film works by Elam, the camera focuses on the canopy, on tree leaves casting their shadows on the ground, and
Similarly to a portion of “E1 A&W F Print,” “El” focuses on the Chicagoan locomotion via CTA trains. A static camera idly sits passenger, recording the swiping cityscape. Scampering atop rooftops, visual markers identify (for at least a portion of the footage), in particular, the Blue Line’s peripherals. A short portion of footage depicts the