UNDERCITY from Andrew Wonder on Vimeo. Watch in full-screen mode.
It’s been a rough year and a half for me in my hometown of Minneapolis: the job market is in the latrine and I am poor. I seldom go out to enjoy myself and see what the city has to offer. I’ve pretty much begun to shun the art & social scene and have whittled my list of hobbies down to feeling bad about circumstances and eating junk food. Sometimes I have eaten Taco Bell. I’m making it sound worse than it is, because I really enjoy being home with my wife and daughter, and really the hardest part of my life is working nights and not being there.
An amazing development happened over the summer though, I joined a band with minimal aspirations. Eventually, the band totally minimized their aspirations to really being nothing more than a lose association of dudes annoying wives and girlfriends with loud noise. A few of us saw more potential and we made plans. We scored an office space that would allow us to play our music after-hours. We have a nice windowed office several stories above the street level and during breaks we make the time to take in the view of our portion of the skyline. The restroom is really nice; you can take a pee and watch club-goers on the street below. You can still see people in restaurants below waiting for tables. Sometimes you get to watch cops hassling people at the bus stop. Then it’s back to working on songs about barbarians, mini-vans, and societal roles.
It’s an experience that has helped me to rekindle my civic love, but without having to get too deep into the grit of it. Though I like and want the grit, I am too afraid of heights, drowing, and probably dying to try and experience this grit. Which has really set the stage for this short film, Undercity, to appeal me. Steve Duncan, ‘guerrilla historian’, has an honest and unending love for his city, New York. It is a detached and singular affection. More over, his love especially extends to the parts of the city not meant for people and thus, the dramatic and dangerous aspects of his love for his city are ever present. He’s a fascinating human here in this film, but is also equally fascinating in this NPR profile and this New York Times article.
This film (directed by Andrew Wonder) is pretty riveting: the filmmaker knows his subject well, his subject knows and loves the territory and it’s people, the photography is tight, and there are more than a few moments that made me feel weak in the knees. Things like art and film really excel, gracefully or cheaply, when they can take you places you normally can’t go. Cities are big and complex and contain frontiers. People are interesting and courageous when they want to or happen to be. It is also appealing on a very basic, yet also powerful level to dodge subway trains and cops to find cool shit.
