Mannahatta premiered with orchestra and choir at the 2013 BAM Next Wave Festival as part of a program called "21c Liederabend", at the BAM Harvey Theater. It has also been presented with recorded audio at the New Museum's IDEAS CITY program in the Great Hall at Cooper Union, projected onto the wonderous facade of Brooklyn Public Library, at a symposium hosted by the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation and as part of my screening and artist talk at the Skissernas Museum in Lund, Sweden.

This film was created in conversation with composer Judd Greenstein. The film and its music are set to Walt Whitman's poem of the same name.

A number of images in this film will also appear in A Marvelous Order, a new opera about Robert Moses and Jane Jacobs, that I am creating with Judd and US Poet Laureate Tracy K. Smith.

The visual concepts in Mannahatta each have a relationship to the poem as well as to the story of Moses and Jacobs.

While making this film, I challenged myself to plan less, and put more faith in my subconscious (in contrast to Plan Of The City, which I planned meticulously). I also pushed further into associative storytelling than I had any of my prior films.

Each of the animated motifs in this film sets up one world and cuts out a window revealing another. The collage in Plan Of The City is primarily additive - elements are placed on top of others; in the windows in Mannahatta I am playing with subtraction.

This film was been made possible by a generous grant from the New York State Council on the Arts. The music was commissioned by a consortium of orchestras. DM Stith sings the vocal solo.

Credits

Mannahatta

Directed and animated by Joshua Frankel
Music by Judd Greenstein
Text by Walt Whitman

Associate Animators Pete Hamilton, Joshua Merck
Music performed by Community Engagement Lab Orchestra, Paul Gambill, conductor, Counterpoint Chorus, Nathaniel Lew, Director
Soloist DM Stith
Recorded live April 10, 2015, Chandler Music Hall, Randolph, Vermont
Judd Greenstein’s ‘Mannahatta’ was commissioned by the Community Engagement Lab, American Composers Orchestra, Detroit Symphony Orchestra, Gateway Chamber Orchestra, North Carolina Orchestra and Waterbuy Symphony Orchestra

This film has been created with generous support from the New York State Council on the Arts.