A travelogue to places which defy the surface of the world. In order of appearance: an ideal palace built by a postman after each of his daily rounds; a red house designed by a socialist agitator; a pacifist tower erected against the movements of History; an exuberant garden engendered in the feminine; and a merry cemetery, which conjures a community of equals in the outskirts of Europe. To ensure we risk our joy for those who act in their own time. (Sílvia das Fadas)

Featuring texts by Bertolt Brecht (read by Andy Rector), William Morris (read by Thom Andersen), Simone Weil (lido por/read by Evelyn Emile) and Maria Gabriela Llansol. 

“I have filmed a house in Los Angeles called “El Alisal”, built by Charles Fletcher Lummis between circa 1897 and 1910, with stones from a nearby creek. It was a late decision to take this chapter out of the film, as I thought it contained a different energy and deserved to be a film in itself, perhaps a longer film about its complex master builder.” — Sílvia das Fadas

“Fall into winter 1964, Urban Renewal forced us to move a few blocks to West of Broadway. Our Sky Socialist ‘set’ is still standing and I’m drawn back to document more. It’s old New York, a lot of history. And then it no longer stands, no more than my first home in the slums of Williamsburg just across the river.” — Ken Jacobs

What was almost lost — the heartbreaking handheld 8-mm footage that Jacobs shot as his first Manhattan neighborhood was being destroyed between 1963 and ’64 — has been rediscovered in intense color and stupendous movement thanks to this 2019 celluloid-digital hybrid. Somewhere in the middle of the film, I began to feel as I have when I looked at certain paintings by Cezanne and Vermeer for the first time — that the work of art has transformed the act of seeing  ... A masterpiece, not only of avant-garde movies, or cityscape movies, or documentary essays, but a movie masterpiece, no modifiers needed. (Amy Taubin)