The Kiss is an independent short film by Joshua Cody, an award-winning artist and composer and artistic director of Sospeso Ltd., and Paul Bozymowski, a graduate of Northwestern University's film school and a filmmaker at the New York-based production company Radical Media; he has directed the ESPN series The Life and Platform, the documentary on the Ground Zero viewing platform in New York and its architect, David Rockwell.

Writing on the Sospeso performance that included the first screening of The Kiss, the New York Times remarked, "There were also a few ambitious video productions, the best of which was The Kiss (2003), a cohesive drama about a transcontinental romance, with an alluring score by Mr. Cody, the ensemble's co-director, for soprano, violin, electronic sound."

The story of The Kiss takes place in August 1978 and concerns a young couple from Madrid spending the summer in New York.  Andreo has abandoned his literature thesis on the Spanish poet Federico García Lorca to pursue a law degree at Columbia; he is finishing a summer internship at a major corporate law firm and is anticipating a future in the corporate world with ambivalence.  Tasia, his girlfriend, is herself the daughter of a wealthy Madrid lawyer and an extraordinary Moroccan mother who works in the Spanish government.  She misses Spain; Andreo has just received an offer from the New York firm:  will they stay together?  If so, where?

Andreo works in the new Citibank building, a marvel of engineering whose structure, unbeknownst to our protagonists and to the city of New York, has just been found to be unstable:  the building's architect, William, has discovered an 8% chance of collapse during any month.  How to explain this to Citibank, his client?  To the city?  Will it fall?  Can it be repaired?

With its interwoven motifs of the power of the corporate establishment, social and cultural identity, the architecture of skyscrapers, Spain and Morocco, love and trust, the poetry of Lorca, the twenty minute film obliquely and inevitably invites reflection upon the tragic events of September 11.

The next screening of the film, on digital video, will be by Sospeso on Friday, January 9, 2004 at a performance at the Orensanz Center.