Told in the form of a staged deposition and composed entirely of 35mm presskit photos from Hollywood blockbusters, the latest from experimental filmmaker James N. Kienitz Wilkins explores the role of cinematic detritus in our lives. Wilkins voices a multitude of characters as they argue about the effects of cinephilia on the self and the culture, crafting a witty off-beat trial of the moving image. (BAM)
Each screening of Still Film will include a different short film pairing, as well as a pre-recorded Q&A with director James N. Kienitz Wilkins. Director Alex Tyson will be in person for the Nov. 30 program.
Schedule:
Thursday, November 30, 8:00pm | Alex Tyson in person!
3 Minutes in America (Alex Tyson, 2015, 3 min)
A romance unfolds amid an array of contemporary phenomena, including vaccine production, basketball games, fracking, and activity on Hillary Clinton’s email server.
Folkloric Film (David Levine, 2017, 17 min)=
An ongoing investigation into director David Levine’s father’s relationship with the painter Mark Rothko.
Still Film (Dir. James N. Kienitz Wilkins, 2023, 72 min)
Cinematic memory on the defense.
TRT: 92 min.
***
Friday, December 1, 7:00pm
Exhibition (Dir. Mary Helena Clark, 2022, 19 min)
Pivoting between two stories of women and their relationships with objects—a Swedish woman’s marriage to the Berlin Wall, and a suffragette’s hatcheting of Velásquez’s The Toilet of Venus—Mary Helena Clark’s Exhibition is a maze-like tour through images and artifacts, a dense cryptography of the forms and objects that hold us in.
Still Film (Dir. James N. Kienitz Wilkins, 2023, 72 min)
Cinematic memory on the defense.
TRT: 91 min.
***
Sunday, December 3, 3:00pm
Cutting the Mushroom (Mike Crane, 2021, 22 min)
An email correspondence between the filmmaker and a mysterious online art dealer in the Baltic develops into a strangely intimate exchange about art and authenticity.
Still Film (Dir. James N. Kienitz Wilkins, 2023, 72 min)
Cinematic memory on the defense.
TRT: 94 min.
"A one of a kind film from a one of a kind director." —Joshua Brunsting, Criterioncast
"A deeply funny and fully humanistic reflection of the world as it unfolds in real time." —Sierra Pettengill, Screen Slate
"A stunning, acute critique of the regressive artistic sensibilities that plague contemporary Hollywood." —Robert Daniels, The New York Times
"Like La Jetée did some sixty years prior, Still Film combines visual resplendence and verbal elan to chart a flexible and invigorating dialectic of cinema and consumer." —Morris Yang, InReviewOnline
"A film of emancipation. Like a reality-check, Still Film introduces a grain of reality in the cinema memory—of films, in films. It makes this reality explode the delusional machine of cinema nostalgia." —Giuseppe Di Salvatore, Filmexplorer
(Available to download after screening date)