No York City
A Rick Liss short film – 1983


Rick Liss’s “NO YORK CITY” pulses viewers through the heart of an iconic metropolis at the speed of blood. Filmed in 1983 with an aesthetic that defies time, this riveting work moves us with both alienation and beauty.

The film sees the city as an organism and its citizens as cells-- sometimes frantic, sometimes in harmony. We race across a harbor, speed through traffic, gawk at art, balk at commerce, scuttle along sidewalks, weave through subways, bask in tickertape, dream beneath an angel at Bethesda Fountain and greet mimes in a boat on a great pond. As night falls, we join the electric carnival before soaring above the skyscrapers at dawn.

The long day’s journey is impeccably wrought by Liss with a striking sound design, music by Laurie Anderson and Jeffrey Meyer, influences of Buñuel and Scorsese, and a vision that’s distinctly his own. It’s an amazing movie. Watch it.

Rob Ackerman – Playwright




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"Rick Liss' past-paced, trippy short film "No York City" is an erratic witness to New York in 1980." "...a great look at a city half-gone."
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"Call it the anti-"Koyaanisqatsi": Rick Liss' 6-minute experimental short film "N.Y.C. (No York City)" shoots through Manhattan with the speed and motion of those "Naked Gun" movie openings. The transitions are seamless..."
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"Here’s a great time-lapse video of a much seedier New York City shot back in 1983. Set to the sounds of Laurie Anderson’s “For Electronic Dogs,” it’s a wonderful portrait of what NYC was like in the early-80s."
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"In just under six minutes, you can take a (mostly) stop-motion trip to 1983 New York City in this short film called "N.Y.C. (No York City)" by Rick Liss with music by Laurie Anderson. The video follows a dizzying path through Manhattan…"
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"A time-lapse tour of 1983 Manhattan when it was brown and grey and scary and there was still a Forty-Deuce where you could see triple-feature dirty movies and pick up a hustler, etc. And, yeah, it was a hotbed of creativity."
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"...a wonderful six minute film that combines fast motion images of the sights and people of 1980′s New York with humorous sound dubbing and a driving electronic score by Laurie Anderson. Think of it as a time capsule without all the dust."
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"...the short clip is a visually stuttering, yet no less stunning account of early 1980s Gotham.  A 'creatively fertile' time in city history."
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