City Life

City Life is a 1990 Dutch anthology documentary project initiated, compiled, produced, and partly directed by Dirk (Dick) Rijneke and Midred Van Leeuwaarden. They invited filmmakers from cities around the world to participate and present their views on the city in which they live. Additionally, they were requested to incorporate the unifying concept of a floating city (Titanic) and the tower of Babel in relation how they perceive the city they know so well. As usual, the overall quality of each of these short films vary, and while there are some cohesive elements and themes, often the most experienced and best filmmakers, namely Krzysztof Kieślowski and Béla Tarr, shine the most.

Zbigniew Preisner composed original music to City Life, which offers a level of cohesiveness, utilizing his idiosyncratic methods and means. Some years after, the composer would return to collaborate with Rijneke for the Joris Ivens inspired short film Bruggen, a discontinued bridge in Rotterdam in 1996. After this, Preisner would continue to write the original music to two other Dutch films: SuperTex (2002) and Sportman van de Eeuw (2005).

The omnibus feature, unlike the TV series People's Century, featuring a single title theme by the composer, and the miniseries Radetzkymarsch with a lot more original score, includes perhaps 20 minutes of original score, opening each of the chapters seuiging  and in between the shorts, interconnected with short impressionistic footage, and is in heard in the end credits, across all chapters.

Preisner employs several of his recurring soloists, a soprano, choir, unerring oboe, harp, guitar plucking and woodwind performer, capturing a melancholic, solemn feel not of the cities themselves intrinsically, but more about the encompassing themes the initiators requested of all the makers. Incidentally, a new 2025-2026 initiative from the composer called the Preisner Scoring Competition reaches its finale soon, and is about composing a 10–15-minute composition for symphony orchestra inspired by Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s painting The Tower of Babel.

While the music opening each of the four chapters provides a similar, specific, and idiosyncratic interplay between soloists, they especially excel in variations and the interplay between new music in between the shorts of all four chapters.  In the end credits of chapter one, the interplay between a transcendental harp, choir and soprano represents the finest composition of the entire score. It is exemplary of the composer mostly entire career, presenting music that withhold his wider musical integrity.

Raring original music by Zbigniew Preisner: 10 out of 10


The shorts:


Warszawa - Siedem dni w tygodniu/Seven Days a Week
-Director: Krzysztof Kieślowski
-Composer of original music: none

The short marked the return of the director in making a documentary one last time, already fully devoted to film and other things.  The short is wordless incredible description of Polish family in the late 1980s. In this throwback, only using pre-existing music previously, the maker logically chose not to allow Preisner to write any music. The use of Mozart is exciting in the daily life approach.

Rating: none


Houston - Unheavenly City
-Director: Eagle Pennell
-Composer of original music: Eric van der Kroft

The music is atypically an attempt to set an atmosphere with then popular synthesiser, which then and now are hopelessly out of fashion, but also without exceeding anything other than rudementary scoring. However, in a growing appraisal of seeing in its time of making alongside other facets of the making and elements that define the late 1980s and early 1990s, it has some merit. The music is similar to Tom Doukupil' s music to the Hamburg short.

Rating: 4 out of 10


São Paulo - Desordem em progresso/Disorder in Progress
-Director Carlos Reichenbach
-Composer of original music: Andrey Luis Oliviera and percussion by Chico Carlos

The score features guitar plucking, percussion, outdated synthesisers, and harmonica and underscores an uninteresting view of the city.

Rating 5 out of 10


Buenos Aires - Una historia breve sobre nada/A Short Film About Nothing
Director: Alejandro Agresti
Composer of original music: Paul (M.) van Brugge

Alejandro Igresti’ films quite often benefited from his collaborations with Dutch composer Paul M. van Brugge.  It opens with a tracking shot in the city, using a minimal and simple set of tones performed by synthesisers. The same minimal piece is later taken over by piano only and is revisited throughout the short, effectively underscoring the poetic realism of the porteño approach by the director.

Rating: 9 out of 10


Hamburg - Polsprung/Poleshift
Director: Gábor Altorjay
Composer of original music: Tom Doukupil

See the Houston short.

Rating: 4 out of 10


Dakar - Dakar-Clando
Director: Ousmane William Mbayec (as William Mbaye Ousmane)
Composer of original music: Abdoul Aziz Doeng music and singer Mamadou Ba

It features localised original and (traditional?) music, but there is nothing else to say.

Rating: 5 out of 10


Barcelona - Eulalia-Marta, abril 1988/Eurala-Marta, April 1988
Director: José Luis Guerín
Composer of original score: none

No rating


Bevagna - In Arcadia/Stones, Storm and Water
Director: Clemens Klopfenstein
Composer of original score: Santori Sbillini

The music, if at all original, question mark, is an intriguing transcendental experience using choir, woodwind, and percussion in underscoring, interrelated with the continuous church bells and a feeling of longing, poetic, even meeting with surreal comedy and satire.

Rating: 7 out of 10


Thou Shalt Not Speak Evil - Tbilisi
Director: Tato Kotetshvili
Composer of original music: Giorgi Tsintsadze

Giorgi Tsintsadze is a Georgian composer who has written a baton of memorable works for film, including Anemia, Gamis zarebi, and two for the Dutch films - Magonia and De Vliegenierster van Kazbek - directed by Ineke Smits. The pace of the short is underscored by, at first, trivial rhythmic music, utilizing a lot of stringed instruments, the balaban woodwind and percussion, which fuses with traditional singing, ultimately presenting fair slice of transcendental quality.

Rating 7 out 10


Calcutta - Calcutta, My Eldorado
Director: Mrinal Sen
Composer of original music: Ananda Shankar

The short is a traditional portrayal of a doomed city such as Calcutta. The short intersperses historical context with current-day issues, underscored by original music by Shankar, a mixture of traditional Indian instruments (tablas, woodwind, sitar) intertwined with a non-diegetic piece of source and score. In editing and music, it is the only short to capture the beat and rhythm of a city commonly, but it is quite effective.

Rating 5 out of 10


Budapest - Au utolsó hajó/The Last Boat
Director: Béla Tarr
Composer of original score: and sound designer: Mihály Vig

While made especially for the anthology series, Béla Tarr based his short (again) on the writings of László Krasznahorka. It is a valuable early example of how he transitioned to slow, contemplative cinema. In content, there is a lot of deeper value and references to Budapest, which sets it apart from all other shorts, as it has a deeply horrific and immersive feel of the collapse of the Eastern Bloc and the migration of many.

The short opens and later reprises a piece of opera by Mozart, with the only interesting literal inclusion of the Tower of Babel. As this poetic and confrontational piece of cinema regarding several Hungarian themes, Mihály Vig ’ sound design is infallible. At first, there is a piece of hypnotic, ethereal sound design, followed by a brilliant piece of what sounds like a moving, stuttering boat and drumming. Towards the end, the only musical piece appears, using his idiosyncratic minimal use of strings intertwined with the sound of the stuttering boat, previously emulated through sound design, as people leave.

Rating: 10 out of 10


Randstad - Stadsjungles/Urban Jungles
Director: Mildred Van Leeuwaarden, Dirk Rijneke
Composer of original score: none

The initiators of the project directed a segment set in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, without using any original music, despite also attracting Preisner to write encompassing music. The short is uninteresting, but the use of Arvo Pärt does, from a distance, matched the integrity of Mihaly Vig and Preisner.

No rating



City Life is a mostly undesirable, but still interesting project, levelling in between a few good shorts, but excelling more in the quality of original music composed by composers Mihály Vig, Paul M. van Brugge and Zbigniew Preisner.



(The review is based on the quality of original composed for each short, while mentioning use of pre-existing music and the quality of the short themselves).



(23-06-2026)