If you’ve walked past 130 Orchard St. (just above Delancey Street) in the past few days, you may have noticed this new mural on the shuttered Daniel’s Leather facade from JR, the French street artist. Through Nov. 8, Galerie Perrotin is running a pop-up installation featuring “Ellis,” JR’s new short film.
It’s set in the old hospital on Ellis island and stars Robert De Niro. More from the New York Times:
The film, with a scripted voiceover written by the Oscar winner Eric Roth (“Forrest Gump”) and music by the French songwriter Woodkid, follows Mr. De Niro as he walks through the hospital, which was abandoned in 1954 and stands as a ruin, with broken windows and rusted lockers. “It was very eerie,” Mr. De Niro said at the film’s New York premiere on Friday on the Lower East Side… JR was first inspired to make the film as a way to document the crumbling hospital. “A lot of the places you see in the film have decayed so much, you can’t see them anymore,” he said Friday. He also wanted to highlight its connection to the current global battles over migration, by including photos of contemporary undocumented United States immigrants, scattered among the collages of faces from a century ago.
The hospital was also the setting for the artist’s installation “Unframed – Ellis Island,” which featured archival images of immigrants who came through the facility. For people who can’t see the film at 130 Orchard St., JR is willing to send the film out for viewing by small groups. He explained in an Instagram post last week. More details available here.
ELLIS – trailer from SOCIAL ANIMALS on Vimeo.
