Sightlines · a viewing thread

Cinema Without Words

Watch these as one run of pure image and music — the city symphony reborn, from Vertov's roaming cameras to 70mm temples, disaster zones, and Apollo footage, each the whole world edited into rhythm without a line of dialogue.

Film-school and Criterion canon rather than crowd favorites, but the easiest kind of demanding: hypnotic, plotless, nothing to follow — just sink in, ideally on the biggest screen and loudest sound system you can find.

• Man with a Movie Camera (1929)
• Koyaanisqatsi (1983)
• Samsara (2011)
• For All Mankind (1989)
• Baraka (1992) — The wordless global tone-poem you shelved and forgot is by Ron Fricke — the eye behind Koyaanisqatsi and the director of Samsara — so if those hypnotized you, this is the missing 70mm middle chapter to finally pull down.