Peter Emmanuel Goldman

Shot on 42 St. in New York, mostly in slow motion and sometimes in negative slow motion, accompanied by original and haunting music, the film captures the depravity, loneliness, poverty, and insanity of New York. While Woody Allen’s upbeat New York exists, Goldman’s New York also exists. With beggars and drunks lying on the streets and bodies passing film Marquees in a rhythmic slow motion the film reminded me of Geroge Grosz’s paintings of Berlin in the 1920’s. All of Goldman’s films are known for their powerful imagery and Pestilent City is no exception. This is one reason the film was shown twice at the New York Film Festival. Goldman was one of the innovators of the film art, but his films have all but been forgotten.Read More »

Wheel of Ashes, made in Paris by the under-recognized Americdan director, Peter Emanuel Goldman, is a very powerful film that you will remember long after viewing it. A young man, played by French actor Pierre Clementi,(Belle de Jour) despondently wanders the Paris streets until he meets a young woman , played by the Danish actress Katinka Bo. At the same time he falls under the influence of the Indian Vedanta philosophy, which encourages giving up the world to find God. Pierre retreats to a tiny room near the Bastille to search for God, but ends up almost going insane from the terrible conflict between his search for God, his sexual desire and the attachment to his girlfriend.Read More »

Desperate sexuality, desperate emotions;
every gesture and inflection an act of grave
import; a film of young adults, infused with
a new existentialist humanism, devoid of
certainty or illusion. The sharp contrast
and graniness of the still indicate the film’s
distance from slick commercial cinema.
A major new talent.
– Amos VogelRead More »