STILL FILM (2023) with filmmaker James N. Kienitz Wilkins

(James N. Kienitz Wilkins, 2023, approx. 70 min)

The cinema of New York City-based filmmaker James N. Kienitz Wilkins is visually minimalistic yet conceptually expansive, reminding us that while films can be as spare as a handful of still images and a voice-over, they are always enmeshed in dizzyingly vast frameworks of law, technology, and culture. STILL FILM, Wilkins’ latest feature-length disquisition, lingers on a clutch of promotional images drawn from the press kits of Hollywood films from the 1980s and 90s to interrogate (literally!) the impressions these films leave on personal and collective memory. A breathtakingly dense and associative soundtrack accompanies these images as Wilkins voices four characters engaged in an imaginary legal deposition that indicts intellectual property, conspiracy theory, celebrity, and the Millennial impulse for analog nostalgia. For an artist who delights in paradox, it’s not surprising that STILL FILM is both an utterly idiosyncratic and a highly relatable confrontation with mass media.

Following the screening, Wilkins will appear for discussion and audience Q&A. 

About the filmmaker:

James N. Kienitz Wilkins is a filmmaker and artist. His films and videos have screened widely at international film festivals and arts venues including Berlin, Toronto, New York, Locarno, Rotterdam, CPH:DOX, Film at Lincoln Center, BAM, MoMA, Tate Modern, and beyond. In 2017, he was included in the Whitney Biennial. Solo exhibitions include Gasworks (London, 2018), Spike Island (Bristol, UK, 2019) and Kunsthalle Winterthur (Switzerland, 2019). Retrospectives of his work have been presented at RIDM (Montreal, 2017) and Metrograph Cinema (NYC, 2024).

Host or Publisher The Block Museum of Art