Big Market

1984, 23:36 min, color, sound

Big Market is an evocative travel journal and a formalist study, as Jonas transforms time and space in a document of Budapest's marketplace. A multilayered portrait of place is conveyed through images of the market's produce displays, transaction rituals, faces and gestures, as well as the city's architecture and streets. By constructing a doubled image — an inset with a vertical roll — Jonas transforms the market from the everyday to the emblematic. The ever-moving, abstracted inset image creates an illusion of spatial depth and fragmented time. This mediating device, and the re-scanned images of Hungarian people, serve to emphasize Jonas' role as observer, both inside and outside of the culture.

Director: Joan Jonas. Camera: Laszlo Molnar. Sound: Elek Korosfalvi. Produced by Mafilm Studio Tarsulas.