Talking in New York

1981 • Directed by

Takahiko Iimura

A kind of first person cinema where the filmmaker is the cameraman as well as the actor. Acting like a total stranger in the city who does not speak or hear the language, he walks with a camera to such sight-seeing spots as Times Square,and the top of the Empire State building, etc., only listening to himself speaking the words: "I hear myself at the same time that I speak" in two languages: Japanese and English. The words are a quotation from the book by Jacques Derrida, French philosopher, which he calls "phenomenological essence."