Twenty years ago, the towers of the New York World Trade Center collapsed. In addition to the endlessly repeated television images of this event, manifold stagings of the building have long existed, presenting the WTC as a highly symbolic icon, a speculative destruction fantasy, or merely as a spectacular backdrop. In Misty Picture, such fictional motifs string together: city symphony, disaster movie, and medial trauma therapy become one.

This short documentary demonstrates how glass blowers work in Dutch factories such as  Leerdam or Schiedam. Thanks to the superbly edited ballet of working hands and mechanical motions of the engines, it is predominantly a cinematic tour de force. That the industry can’t do without man’s involvement is illustrated by the voice of filmmaker Bert Haanstra himself, counting the bottles on the conveyor belt until one of them breaks.

Machines check and sort nature in an industrial greenhouse. Cameras enable the robots to do their specialised work. Human hands only intervene to straighten what is crooked, to plant delicate items, or to clean the mechanics to ensure things continue to run smoothly. Products must be up to standard to be market-ready for the consumer. Only at night, when everything is asleep, does unexpected life move in and take control.

Oscar-winning filmmaker Hilary Harris pioneered time-lapse filmmaking techniques to present a unique experiential view of our world: chaos and confusion seem to multiply in every corner of the Big Apple. Yet, there seems to be some order in that relentless system. The same can be said about the human body. Shot over 15 years, between 1959 and 1974, Organism proves that cities and organisms are alike.