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From famous corners of the Louvre Museum to the modernist buildings of Oscar Niemeyer in Brazil and Mies van der Rohe in Canada: Invention takes us on a dynamic tour of fluctuating cityscapes, capturing the texture of these places, their landmarks, and the people who inhabit their streets and buildings, with images of glass, light, shifting reflections, hard concrete, spiral staircases – and paintings. Shot in Lewis’s signature style of long, meandering takes using an almost free floating camera, the film juxtaposes architecture, urban life, and art. The camera drifts along buildings and streets, lingering on structural details, before swirling off into a different direction, creating surprising patterns and vantage points.
“Invention boldly posits the modern city as the prototype for cinema in its perspectival play, panoply of reflective surfaces, and dramatic contrasts of light and shadow. Lewis prompts us to experience the wonder and awe of moving images not from the subjective/voyeuristic perspective provided by our assorted mobile devices, but as if we are a disembodied presence navigating our way through modernist form.” Andréa Picard
Mark Lewis, born in 1958 in Hamilton, Canada, is a visual artist who lives and works primarily in London, UK.
Production: Soda Film + Art, London; National Film Board of Canada, Montreal
Screenplay: Mark Lewis
Camera: Martin Testar, Bobby Shore
Format: DCP, Color
Running time: 87 min
Language: Without dialogue
Photo: © National Film Board of Canada
