Common Carrier

James N. Kienitz Wilkins’s film tracks a small network of artists and their associates, skipping between scripted performances and conversations in which real people play versions of themselves. A highly inventive look at creative life, labor, and technology, the film is a discordant rush of layered images—contrasting views, superimposed—set to a shifting radio soundtrack.

Kienitz Wilkins says his goal was to “reflect our multifaceted contemporary world where there is no one right way to look or listen: we are perpetually barraged by a sea of information, histories, and the promises of absolute connection, while remaining fundamentally alone.”

A discussion with the filmmaker follows the screening.

78 min, USA, 2017
HD, Color
Stereo, English w/subtitles

This event is co-presented with the Film Studies Center at the University of Chicago.

James N. Kienitz Wilkins is a filmmaker and artist based in Brooklyn. His work has screened in international film festivals and venues including Berlinale Forum, Toronto, Locarno, Rotterdam, CPH:DOX, MoMA PS1, Tate Modern and beyond. In 2017, he was included in the Whitney Biennial and a retrospective of his work was showcased at RIDM (Montréal). In 2018, he opened a solo show at Gasworks Gallery (London) and participated in the Biennial of Moving Images (Geneva).