New York-based Jem Cohen is a contemporary proponent of the city symphony, walking the streets of the metropolis, armed with a Super-8 camera and an impeccable instinct for the architectural artifact, the gradations of shadow and light, the combustion of everyday life. In the enthralling Lost Book Found (37 mins), a curious ledger is discovered containing obtuse listings about the city. The notebook's scribblings are an unknown author's obsessive attempt to assay the chaos around him. Dedicated to Walter Benjamin, Lost Book Found employs luscious rhythms and stark images to compound the enigmatic quality of what Cohen calls the "city as repository and ruin." More recently Cohen explored an Italian municipality smothering in its own history. Amber City (48 mins) shows not the off-kilter architecture and Renaissance relics of touristic allure, but the mundane actualities of the everyday-automobiles darting along a riverfront highway, the staid formality of museum interiors, a face suspended in the light of a cafe. Using a collaged narrative of historical data, regional folklore, and literary texts, this beautifully paced work coaxes authenticity out of a city stifled by its own mythos.-Steve Seid