At once raw and eloquent, Twenty-Four-Dollar Island seems unfinished, and it may well have been. Very little is known except that parts of it were eventually used as a backdrop for a New York stage show. We also know that Rebecca Strand, wife of photographer Paul Strand, mentions seeing the film in August 1925 in an air-conditioned movie theater. The film as presented here sources from two different copies, one more complete version held at Eye Film Institute in Amsterdam, and the other from Gosfilmofond of Russia showing that the film circulated there as late as 1929. What we see is an artist’s infatuated with the Manhattan skyline shot with telephotos lenses. Views shot from the same camera positions are organized into visual clusters, and closer inspection reveals a vague attempt at organization, wherein Flaherty looks at what is in front of him to explore the space from slightly different angles.