Lucien Smith

The Ion Pack, New York City’s once-anonymous Instagram trolls of the downtown film world, talk with filmmakers as they contemplate life, love and longing in the city of 8 million stories.

This short film explores memory and transformation by cataloging landmarks that aren’t even a decade old: 1 World Trade Center, the 59th Street Apple Store, the new Beatrice Inn and spiffed-up SoHo. The narration, a meditation on the life of the city in Melville- and Whitman-inspired prose, glides above the 16 millimeter film in the early morning hours of a Sunday in New York City.