13.04.14 | PUBLIC HEARING
LA CINEMATHEQUE QUEBECOISE | 20h30 | Gratuit | Free
Présentation suivie d'une rencontre avec le cinéaste | Film followed by Q&A with the filmmaker
Présentation suivie d'une rencontre avec le cinéaste | Film followed by Q&A with the filmmaker
AUDIENCE Q+A : EN | FR
VISIONS INTERVIEW | ENTREVUE DE VISIONS
110 minutes / 16mm-to-HD / B&W / Stereo / USA / 2012
public.automaticmoving.com
ENPublic 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.
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FRPublic Hearing est une performance qui reconstitue, mot pour mot, une rencontre publique dans un village rural américain : un document publiquement accessible, transformé en cinéma. Tourné entièrement en gros plans sur pellicule 16mm noir et blanc, on suit un groupe d'acteurs et non-acteurs qui lit entre les lignes d'un débat ironique sur le changement d'un Wal-Mart existant en un Super Wal-Mart. Public Hearing propose une expérience formelle et satirique : une comédie didactique. Il s'agit d'un documentaire dans son sens le plus littéral.
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INFO
Public Hearing is the first feature film by James N. Kienitz Wilkins, filmed in one room with an ensemble cast of professional actors, sculptors, filmmakers, musicians and businessmen. The subject of the hearing is the environmental impact of an existing Wal-Mart expanding to become a super Wal-Mart. Once visualized as a film, attention drifts from the seemingly unremarkable text to the theatrics of the bumbling tautological twins recognized as process and protocol (practically embodied by the moderator and chairman, respectively). The hearing turns into a redundant lesson in learning how to attend a public hearing, for both the original attendees, and through reenactment, the ever expanding audience of the film. And new ways of listening and watching emerge. Public Hearing might be proposed as a formal experiment and a satirical experience: a didactic comedy. It is a documentary in the most literal sense.
ABOUT THE DIRECTOR
James N. Kienitz Wilkins (b. 1983, USA) is a filmmaker and artist living in Brooklyn. He is the recipient of numerous grants and periodic awards for various projects of specific and/or universal proportions. He is a graduate of the Cooper Union School of Art in New York City.
ABOUT THE COMPOSER
Eugene Wasserman is a composer, audio engineer and musician working in New York. He was the guitarist of the band, Pablo Picasso, and currently plays in the band, Dinner.
CAST
Theodore Bouloukos (chairman) Greg Steinbruner (moderator)
PRESS
“Public Hearing is a thought provoking x-ray of community democracy as ritualist incantation.”
- Politeken.dk
“This brilliantly conceived satire adapts, literally, a mundane transcript from a civic hearing ... somehow infusing the proceedings with a Mamet-like terseness.”
- Indiewire
“... A play about itself ... shows how much people are willing to endure to pretend that a democratic process exists in opposition to corporate manifest destiny.”
- Brooklyn Rail
“... F**king amazing ... America can be so cruel sometimes.”
- The Stranger
ABOUT THE DIRECTOR
James N. Kienitz Wilkins (b. 1983, USA) is a filmmaker and artist living in Brooklyn. He is the recipient of numerous grants and periodic awards for various projects of specific and/or universal proportions. He is a graduate of the Cooper Union School of Art in New York City.
ABOUT THE COMPOSER
Eugene Wasserman is a composer, audio engineer and musician working in New York. He was the guitarist of the band, Pablo Picasso, and currently plays in the band, Dinner.
CAST
Theodore Bouloukos (chairman) Greg Steinbruner (moderator)
PRESS
“Public Hearing is a thought provoking x-ray of community democracy as ritualist incantation.”
- Politeken.dk
“This brilliantly conceived satire adapts, literally, a mundane transcript from a civic hearing ... somehow infusing the proceedings with a Mamet-like terseness.”
- Indiewire
“... A play about itself ... shows how much people are willing to endure to pretend that a democratic process exists in opposition to corporate manifest destiny.”
- Brooklyn Rail
“... F**king amazing ... America can be so cruel sometimes.”
- The Stranger
