We Live In Marwencol
7 April 2011 | Share:
I walked out of the unforgettable film Marwencol, which played at last fall’s Philadelphia Film Festival, intensely aware of every form in the cityscape: every brick, every stoplight, every painted sign, door handle, newspaper box…everything manufactured by human hands, a little world of our creation. Marwencol is a miniature WWII town created by Mark Hogancamp from a point of almost desperate vulnerability. Eleven years ago today he was beaten and left for dead. As he recovered from brain damage, he built Marwencol, which is a living place of his own deadpan imagination. Aren’t our cities too?
Hogancamp is profiled in today’s New York Times by Penelope Green. The film Marwencol will play on PBS’ Independent Lens April 26, the same night, incidentally, the film I co-wrote,The Floodgates Open—on the post-Civil War reimagining of Philadelphia—airs on 6ABC.