In Hidden in Plain Sight, Mark Street travels to four different continents-Africa, Asia, Europe, and South America. Searching in urban landscapes (Dakar, Hanoi, Marseille, and Santiago), he uncovers traces of the leftist political figures Ho Chi Minh and Salvador Allende. Interspersing his own filmed images of these locales with captions containing historical details and writings by political and literary figures, the film is a meditation on perception. Mark structures his film in the first-person, placing himself squarely in the center of the journey. He takes refuge behind the lens, which observes the smallest details and rituals in these locales, and he intercuts scenes of daily life between the four continents. Throughout the film, he incorporates captions that reveal his own tentative emotional and physical relationship to his surrounding environments. These visual observations are underscored with a richly textured sound design, incorporating an amalgam of local urban noises, a soulful original score, and voices from the past including Allende’s radio speech as his presidential palace was being attacked in 1973. Hidden in Plain Sight is a poignant meditation on discovering his own position within a more global historical and geographical continuum.
Hidden in Plain Sight will be screened at 7pm on Sunday, September 28 at 322 Union Avenue in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. This screening is the second of two screenings with Mark Street. On Saturday, September 27, Lynne Sachs will join Mark to screen their recent project, XY CHROMOSOME PROJECT III.
” Provocative. . . . Engaging. . . . Street leaves us with the very real sense that you take your possibilities and limitations with you wherever you go.” -Los Angeles Times
” [A] sweet and powerful look into the future of narrative cinema. Considering the current trend of exploring the documentary nature of scripted film [Street] is in the right place at the right time. Look for him in the future.” -Ron Wilkinson
Mark Street teaches film and videomaking in the Visual Arts Department at Fordham College Lincoln Center. He has made films about the American flag, soft-core pornography, a Brooklyn walk, a trip to Mexico, day-to-day life in Tampa, Florida and three high school girls celebrating their graduation, which have screened at festivals and museums across the world. He lives with filmmaker Lynne Sachs and their two children, Maya and Noa, in Brooklyn, NY.
