The Urban Image Research Workshop, sponsored by the UB Humanities Institute, will present a free public screening on Nov. 30 of two important films addressing the urban condition by legendary documentary filmmaker Manfred “Manny” Kirchheimer.

The screening of “Stations of the Elevated” (1980) and “Claw” (1968), presented by the workshop in collaboration with Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center, will begin at 6:30 p.m. at Hallwalls, 341 Delaware Ave., Buffalo. Kirchheimer will be at the screening to discuss his work.

Kirchheimer was born in 1931 in Germany and came to the U.S. in 1936 when his family fled the Nazis. He studied film at Hans Richter’s Institute of Film Techniques at City College and spent 24 years in the New York film industry as an editor, director and cameraman, editing more than 300 films for the documentary departments of American television networks.

Kirchheimer’s own films explore various aspects of urban life—such as the city’s architectural environment or its graffiti or the docking of an ocean liner.

“Claw,” a fable in the guise of a documentary, argues that styles of contemporary urban development subordinate human values to economic ones. It was chosen to launch “The Machine as Seen at the End of the Mechanical Age,” the Museum of Modern Art’s 1968 landmark exhibit.

“Stations of the Elevated” (1980), one of Kirchheimer’s most celebrated films, is a lyrical documentary of the graffiti tattooing of New York subway trains set to the jazz of the legendary Charles Mingus. It approaches graffiti as art, rather than vandalism, taking viewers along the routes of the subway and elevated tracks.