Terminal Bar is a short film presenting black and white photo driven documentary about a bar situated in the Times Square of New York.

The film begins with single frames of New York streets panning down the screen. In the final pan a photo of the Terminal Bar is shown in a newspaper and the narrator’s voice starts reading the text from the newspaper article. Next the narrator sets the scene with photographs around the area. Following this a film of Sheldon Nadelman the owner and photograph talks about the streets of New York. To highlight the customer’s the narrator introduces us to the catalogue of portraits explaining how Nadelman has been documenting his customers in the bar for the past 10 years.

The opening title sequence appears with visualise of a neon signage and then a montage of portraits. Nadelmon then goes through his customers using faces and numbers to reference them talking about the social history of the bar and how it has changed other time past to present in his own reflection. Towards the end of the film we get a 1 minute montage of all the portraits with music playing breaking up the narrative and film creating a pure visual stimulus.  Finally we get a reflection of Nadelman walking to where the bar used to be and we get a side by side comparison of what it used to look like.

Watching this film gave me a great appreciation for documentation and will influence the way of my working.

The bar shot from the Port Authority, 1981.

Slate Magazine. 2017. Terminal Bar: A Photographic Record of New York’s Most Notorious Watering Hole by Sheldon Nadelman and Stefan Nadelman.. [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.slate.com/blogs/behold/2014/11/03/terminal_bar_a_photographic_record_of_new_york_s_most_notorious_watering.html. [Accessed 13 October 2017].