“Hang Up”, a New York City payphone documentary, was filmed last year by French director Ugo Massa, featuring John Porter of East Harlem Unity Communications and myself, representing the Payphone Project. Since the film’s completion it seems Mr. Massa’s friends and family alike have opened their eyes to payphones, discovering that those communication relics most people ignore are not only still out there but relatively abundant. Describing it as a “European payphone chase” these folks share payphone and phone booth sightings among themselves via camera phones and e-mails, and occasionally Ugo passes one along to me.
This scenario has been true for me for a long time. Anyone who knows me much at all is afflicted by a condition in which they suddenly start seeing payphones everywhere. Hiding in corners at train stations and airports, at shopping malls and theaters, the unicorn-like sightings are regularly reported to me in a spirit of discovering something hiding in plain sight.
“Hang Up” is being prepared for general release. As a rule I almost never watch or read any media coverage of this or any of my web sites. But in November of last year I found myself in a packed theater at the Independent Film Center watching myself on a towering screen in the company of a couple hundred others. I almost had trouble breathing during this seemingly endless span of time, but I was not so clammed up that I failed to recognize what a beautiful film this was.
Last week I started watching some of the film and its outtakes again but I could not deal with hearing myself talk or contemplating my ridiculous haircut. I hope the film does well wherever it goes. See it if you can!
And yes, there was a working payphone in the basement of the Independent Film Center.
Tomorrow will feature a payphone from Indonesia, in a photo taken by Ugo’s father. For today here are photos Ugo Massa’s circle of influence has captured from their ongoing European payphone chase:
For this photo Ugo writes:
These things are all over the place… It’s funny because I didn’t pay so much attention to it before. They are all owned by Orange, formerly France Telecom, which used to be the state monopoly telecommunication company. Orange is now privatized and the French parliament just passed a law in April 2015 that puts an end to its obligation to maintain public telephones all over the country. Before this law was passed the rule was that every French municipality, regardless of its size, needed to have at least one functioning public telephone, and 2 if its population was above 2,000 inhabitants. The only obligation for Orange now is to make sure all these small towns are covered by wireless service.
According to a a recent article, in April 2015 there were 62,250 phone booths throughout France and 240 in Paris. They are completely disregarded as well – although you can spot a couple users here and there…
The fact that you need a special chip card to make a call makes it even less spontaneous to use a public telephone, even let’s say, when you’re cellphone dies.
As seen in the above link, the booths are often used as shelters by homeless people.
