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Music Video Watch: “I-95,” by Jamie Block, Directed by Onur Tukel
New York independent filmmaker Onur Tukel, whose work we have covered quite a bit at Filmmaker, has directed a music video of a song by the anti-folk singer Jamie Block. It’s a small-scale city symphony that speaks to our compulsion to distract ourselves when in the most public of spaces.
Block’s new record comes out tomorrow, and, as a preview, the folks at sonaBLAST! Records have sent it along with this press statement:
Jamie Block is a New York City based singer-songwriter who is known for his ramshackle, genre bending music. In the 1990’s, he busked, skylarked, and chain smoked his way to indie stardom, consistently earning critical acclaim. Block is considered one of the early pioneers of New York’s anti-folk movement. His upcoming release, “The Greene Street Sessions,” available this summer via sonaBLAST! Records, features never before heard recordings from this era.
The playful yet melancholy video was shot in New York by artist and filmmaker Onur Tukel, whose film Catfight (starring Sandra Oh and Anne Heche) premiered at the 2016 Toronto Film Festival and can be seen on Netflix. His latest film, The Misogynists, about two Trump supporters celebrating on election night, will be released later this year. Tukel’s visual art has been seen in New York galleries and will be showing in Reno, Nevada, this fall.
Says Tukel of the video, “it’s a beautiful song, but it’s tragic, the singer is saying goodbye to something. With the video, we wanted to capture this sense of loss. Life is happening all around us, and we’re ignoring it, choosing dehumanization over community.”
