James N. Kienitz Wilkins

A girl recollects a boy named Moon.

In Still Film, his imaginative, incisive ode to movie culture and its beguiling hold on our imagination, Brooklyn-based artist-filmmaker James N. Kienitz Wilkins takes four decades of moving-image circulation to task. The film’s narration, modeled on an actual legal deposition, accompanies a procession of 35mm publicity stills culled by Wilkins from studio press kits. As the film runs through its carousel of Hollywood imagery of yesteryear, the courtroom characters—all performed by Wilkins himself, in his characteristically gravelly, rapid-fire voice—address the shapeshifting nature and mythologizing power of the moviegoing experience. Swirling around unverified facts and conspiracy theories while touching on the technological obsolescence and arcane obsessions that fuel true cinephila today, Wilkins’s playful, subjective journey interrogates the subject of truth itself.

In the children’s book Best Busy Year Ever by Richard Scarry, the hustle and bustle of a city is captured through colorful illustrations. Using his performative storytelling narration, Wilkins questions contemporary social issues with understated ironic wit.

A young couple is shaken by a seemingly fraudulent yet unprovable act that strikes to the core of their cultural pretensions.

A young couple is shaken by a seemingly fraudulent yet unprovable act that strikes to the core of their cultural pretensions.

A young couple is shaken by a seemingly fraudulent yet unprovable act that strikes to the core of their cultural pretensions.

A young couple is shaken by a seemingly fraudulent yet unprovable act that strikes to the core of their cultural pretensions.

A semi-biographical fiction inspired by his father’s work at one of Kodak’s first processing labs, Wilson’s speculative gloss on the evolution of photochemical science entwines multiple perspectives and personas. Co-written by James N. Kienitz Wilkins, Kodak imagines a dialogue between a blind, mentally unstable former film technician and George Eastman himself, recordings of whom play out over a procession of photographs, home video footage, vintage Kodak ads, and animations.

A young man disappears amid talk of violence and demagoguery, leaving behind an obscure cache of letters, postcards, and notebooks.

This Action Lies is a movie about the limits of observation, about staring very hard at something while listening to something else. It is a paranoid polyphonic apology of a simple act: offering three perspectives of an object that may not exist in a room that cannot exist, while at the mercy of a mistrustful monologue. In other words, a defense of cinema. This project expands ideas introduced in one of Kienitz Wilkins’ previous films, Indefinite Pitch (2016), and is similarly voice-driven, using an extended monologue to analyze a common and underappreciated commercial product, elevating it to the status of an almost Platonic form.

This Action Lies is a movie about the limits of observation, about staring very hard at something while listening to something else. It is a paranoid polyphonic apology of a simple act: offering three perspectives of an object that may not exist in a room that cannot exist, while at the mercy of a mistrustful monologue. In other words, a defense of cinema. This project expands ideas introduced in one of Kienitz Wilkins’ previous films, Indefinite Pitch (2016), and is similarly voice-driven, using an extended monologue to analyze a common and underappreciated commercial product, elevating it to the status of an almost Platonic form.

This Action Lies is a movie about the limits of observation, about staring very hard at something while listening to something else. It is a paranoid polyphonic apology of a simple act: offering three perspectives of an object that may not exist in a room that cannot exist, while at the mercy of a mistrustful monologue. In other words, a defense of cinema. This project expands ideas introduced in one of Kienitz Wilkins’ previous films, Indefinite Pitch (2016), and is similarly voice-driven, using an extended monologue to analyze a common and underappreciated commercial product, elevating it to the status of an almost Platonic form.

Composer and filmmaker Christian von Borries' new film Desert of the real visits these contemporary wastelands. In a rich collage of acted scenes and documentary footage, he extends the metaphor of the wasteland to today's medial reality. At the heart of so many holographic simulations and replicas, in a world custom-made for selfie and instagram tweets, he reveals emptiness and potential violence. (David Riff) The only way to trace the distinction between the semblance and the Real is, precisely, to STAGE it in a fake spectacle.

An epic story about a group of American libertarians told in a unique manner, as both an audio performance and an experimental film. The piece features an ensemble cast of 15 actors, each individually recorded and then edited together sentence-by-sentence to create a spoken word experience that activates the power of the mind’s eye. As the drama unfolds, the image slowly transitions from pure black to blinding white throughout the duration of the film.

Mediums is a medium-length film, shot all in medium shots.

In this kaleidoscopic portrait, a screenwriter, an actor, an urban shaman, and the director himself contend with the everyday annoyances that fill the life of an artist.

A procession of black-and-silvery-white stills of New England’s Androscoggin River unspools alongside an anxious monologue on movies, memory, and minor history.

A procession of black-and-silvery-white stills of New England’s Androscoggin River unspools alongside an anxious monologue on movies, memory, and minor history.

A portrait of an actor-turned-occupational-therapist, set to music performed by the filmmaker’s mother in her side job as a church organist.

A private eye type guy recounts a tricky case, set against the unedited duration of a found BetaSP tape.

A portrait of an actor-turned-occupational-therapist, set to music performed by the filmmaker’s mother in her side job as a church organist.

A portrait of an actor-turned-occupational-therapist, set to music performed by the filmmaker’s mother in her side job as a church organist.

An anonymous and mediated testimonial about one man's dangerous dream.

An anonymous and mediated testimonial about one man's dangerous dream.

An anonymous and mediated testimonial about one man's dangerous dream.

Special Features is an apparent interview with three highlights. Presented as a lo-fi fragment from a forgotten video production, an interviewee interacts with an interviewer, recounting a special experience at once unique and shared.

Special Features is an apparent interview with three highlights. Presented as a lo-fi fragment from a forgotten video production, an interviewee interacts with an interviewer, recounting a special experience at once unique and shared.

Special Features is an apparent interview with three highlights. Presented as a lo-fi fragment from a forgotten video production, an interviewee interacts with an interviewer, recounting a special experience at once unique and shared.

Public Hearing is the verbatim re-performance of a rural American town meeting from a transcript downloaded as publicly available information. Shot entirely in cinematic close-up on black-and-white 16mm film, a cast of actors and non-actors read between the lines in an ironic debate over the replacement of an existing Wal-Mart with a super Wal-Mart.

A ghostly militia of lookalikes gradually lose their menace.

Mallard Gibson and Singuz Gumpfree have disowned the society of men: they have instead long conversations with a hare named Jackrabbit, with whom they share a shack on the banks of the East River. Amongst mystic visions, dark humour and anarchic associations of heterogeneous elements, Abrantes stages a post-modern, urban, completely delirious Alice in Wonderland, with a twist in the tail in store for the unsuspecting rabbit.