Mark Lewis

Family inherits an old house and to their surprise, finds the home filled with wonderful colorful creatures that brings the family together.

Acclaimed Canadian contemporary artist Mark Lewis echoes the classic city symphony films of the silent era with this breathtaking cinematic tour through Toronto, São Paolo, and Paris’ Musée du Louvre.

Lewis’s latest film, Galveston, 2017, newly commissioned by The Contemporary Austin and on view at the Jones Center, takes the city of Galveston, Texas, as both its setting and title. This island off the Gulf Coast has had many lives—as historic immigration port, center for shipping and the petrochemical industry, site of natural disasters, and tourist destination—and this complex, layered history becomes the backdrop and undercurrent for the film. In Galveston, Lewis’s ever-present subject is the iconic white skyscraper of One Moody Tower, visible throughout the southeast Texas city since it was completed in 1972.

NORTH CIRCULAR employs a single 4-minute shot. It opens with a distant shot of an abandoned, partially ruined modernist office block backlit against a violet-tinged sky and the camera glides slowly towards the building.