Walk Don’t Walk

Walk Don’t Walk is a documentary about the legs in Manhattan, seen from the perspective of the feet. Unlike most American cities, virtually everyone walks in New York. And in general New Yorkers do not stop for Don’t Walk. While everyone walks in their own rhythm, there are rarely clashes, the stream opens and closes itself. During the New York Marathon, nothing and no one, not even a severe storm, can stop the people. Everything moves.The documentary is accompanied by music in the form of tropical sounds by the famous clarinetist Don Byron. The well-known editor of the magazine Leg Show, Dian Hanson, comments on and analyses American inhibitions about happiness, as well as male weaknesses for beautiful legs. (Of Hanson herself, her former partner Robert Crumb commented: ‘She’s like an Albert Schweizer to pathetic foot-suckers, and she’s pretty good-hearted about it.’)Thomas Struck took two years to make his film, for which he shot a lot of material at ankle height, with the aid of a digital camera on a stick. Many people didn’t even notice, others thought it was funny and some felt `molested’, as a result of which Struck had to go down the police station three times to explain that he was not making pornography, but a documentary about the rhythm of the city and people chasing happiness.