OK Today Tomorrow (1983)

Arriving in the US with a background in abstract art opera and filmincluding work with German director Werner SchroeterVogl began making Super8 films in New York that stripped away the stylistic markers of Hollywood New Wave cinema of the 1960s and 70s and classic avantgarde film leaving only traces of their generic conventions For the first hour of OK Today Tomorrow he stages a series of fraught encounters around the city between four gentrified New Yorkers before abandoning his vague narrative of youthful angst altogether in favor of documenting the urban landscape itself The dusktodawn city symphony that ends the film resembles similar Super8 social studies by Vogls uptown contemporary John Ahearn both recorded the daily lives of workingclass black and immigrant communities on the streets of a city on the verge of the corporate takeover and sweeping gentrification that followed in the 1980s and 90s Preserved by The Museum of Modern Art New York