Join us at the August screening for Mills Folly Microcinema, the monthly showcase of experimental film and video presented by Arts + Literature Laboratory.
Mills Folly Microcinema will screen Common Carrier, the latest feature from Brooklyn-based filmmaker James N. Kienitz Wilkins on Thursday, August 30 at 7:30 p.m. Admission will be $5, or free for Arts + Literature Laboratory members. Seating is limited, and doors open at 7:15 p.m.
“The movie weaves scripted performances by real people playing versions of themselves with intimate conversations about art making, labor, technology, and life,” filmmaker Wilkins explains, “The layered images and sounds—inspired to an extent by my interest in visual techniques developed in early Modernist art—contrast with the technologies and unavoidable airwaves of the 21st century to become what I consider a fair use cinematic ‘mixtape.’ It was my goal 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.”
James Lattimer at Slate Magazine writes that Common Carrier “is a dizzying experimental essay on what the everyday life of an artist looks like in the 21st century. Yet describing the various protagonists in such a way makes Common Carrier sound far more like a conventional documentary than it actually is, as the film endeavors to smudge boundaries and create a mood of dispersion and interference at all times.”
James N. Kienitz Wilkins is a filmmaker and artist based in Brooklyn, New York. Filmmaker Magazine listed Wilkins in their “25 New Faces of Independent Film” in 2016. That same year, he was awarded the Kazuko Trust Award presented by the Film Society of Lincoln Center, a scholarship fund for experimental filmmakers featured in the New York Film Festival. In 2017, he was included in the Whitney Biennial and a retrospective of his work was showcased at Rencontres internationales du documentaire de Montreal (RIDM). His work has screened at the New York Film Festival, Toronto (Wavelengths), Locarno, Rotterdam, Migrating Forms, Ann Arbor, CPH:DOX, MoMA PS1, BAMcinemaFest, Images, and beyond. He is a graduate of the Cooper Union School of Art in New York City.
ABOUT MILLS FOLLY MICROCINEMA
Mills Folly Microcinema is programmed by James Kreul from Madison Film Forum. Complete program notes will be posted at madfilm.org.
What will be screened at Mills Folly Microcinema?
Mills Folly Microcinema will showcase nationally recognized experimental film and video art work from the festival and microcinema circuit. We will also network with regional filmmakers and organizations in Milwaukee (Microlights), Minneapolis (Cellular Cinema), and Chicago (Nightingale Cinema) to bring filmmakers and guest programmers to Madison for screenings. And we will incubate local experimental filmmaking by providing screen time at open shows (the video equivalent of an open mic).
What is “Mills Folly”?
The name for Mills Folly Microcinema was inspired by the nickname for Park Place mansion at 2709 Sommers Avenue, originally called “Elmside” by its first owner Simeon Mills in 1863. As explained at Historic Madison, Inc., “Townspeople called it “Mills Folly,” since it was located so far east that no one could conceive of such a long daily commute to town.”
Just as Mills pursued the outer fringe in 1863, Mills Folly Microcinema will explore new frontiers in 2018 and beyond. Also, experimental programming might seem to be sheer folly in today’s media landscape, but that just reinforces the serious need for an experimental film and video series in Madison.
Mills Folly Microcinema is funded in part by a grant from the Madison Arts Commission, with additional funds from the Wisconsin Arts Board