New York, NY (September 16, 2016) – The Film Society of Lincoln Center announces James N. Kienitz Wilkins as the 2016 Kazuko Trust Award recipient. The grant is presented by the Kazuko Trust and the Film Society in recognition of the excellence and innovation of an artist’s moving-image work. Wilkins’s latest short film, Indefinite Pitch, will screen on October 8 and 9 in Program 5 of this year’s Projections, sponsored by MUBI.

The Kazuko Trust was established upon the death of Kazuko Oshima, a patron of the Film Society and admirer of experimental film. It was her wish to contribute to this area of the film world after her passing, awarding the Film Society with a $50,000 grant for the purpose of creating a scholarship fund for worthy experimental filmmakers featured in NYFF.

Past recipients of the Kazuko Trust Award have included Laida Lertxundi and Michael Robinson, who received $5,000 grants during the Trust’s inaugural year, as well as Dani Leventhal and Jean-Paul Kelly, who were awarded $10,000 grants in 2013 and 2014, respectively. Last year, Ana Vaz was given a $10,000 grant, and she returns to Projections with new work for the 2016 festival. The 2016 committee includes Projections curators Dennis Lim (FSLC Director of Programming) and Aily Nash (independent curator), FSLC Programmers at Large Rachael Rakes and Thomas Beard, and Chris Stults, Associate Curator of Film/Video at the Wexner Center.

Beard says, “James N. Kienitz Wilkins is a prodigiously talented young artist. His film Public Hearing, a quasi Brechtian staging of an actual small-town debate over the replacement of a Walmart with a Super Walmart, is a testament to the rich possibilities still to be found in a cinema of reenactment. The more recent ‘Andre’ trilogy, with its manic gumshoe narration and enigmatically repurposed media artifacts, is a rather different project; it’s as though Hollis Frampton had adapted Raymond Chandler. And in his latest, Indefinite Pitch, what at first seems like a misguided proposal for a TV show, transforms into a dizzyingly tangential and meta-cinematic portrait of the post-industrial New England landscape. Watching these works we find a philosopher of the Wikipedia rabbit hole, and a style of moviemaking that resists standard definition.”

Reflecting on his practice, Wilkins says, “I’m interested in language and performance, and how media technologies are rife with loops, failures, and abstractions. Many of my projects incorporate monologue as a way to fuse original script writing with documentary sources: found text, found footage, interviews, dreams. I’m open to many techniques and approaches, and prefer not to be stuck on a signature style, instead discovering the economy of each piece and accepting that moving image is an art best suited to replicate human thought in all its contradictions: emotion and intellect; the crass and the refined; the bodily and the transcendent. I feel I’m lucky to be making movies in the age of the Internet. I would not be a filmmaker without its endless (and endlessly suspect) knowledge, and the chance for self-education and self-creation outside of established models. To me, experimental film is experimental thinking. It’s really that simple.”

James N. Kienitz Wilkins (b. 1983, Boston, MA) is an artist and filmmaker living in Brooklyn. His short films, features, and multimedia projects have been presented at international film festivals and venues including the New York Film Festival, Rotterdam, Locarno, Toronto
(Wavelengths), Vancouver, CPH:DOX, MoMA PS1, Migrating Forms, Edinburgh (Black Box), and beyond. Past movies includes the experimental documentary feature, Public Hearing
(2012), and the short Special Features (2014), which won the Founder’s Spirit Award at the Ann Arbor Film Festival 2015 and a Grand Prix at the 25 FPS Festival 2015. In 2016, he won the annual ART AWARD at the LICHTER Filmfest Frankfurt International for his short B-ROLL with Andre (2016), and was also selected as one of Filmmaker magazine’s 25 New Faces of Independent Film.

He’s received grants and support from the New York State Council on the Arts, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, Jerome Foundation, Foundation for Contemporary Arts, Experimental Television Center and Wave Farm, among others. Residencies include Triangle Workshops, Residency Unlimited, Vermont Studio Center and the MacDowell Colony, where he was awarded an NEA fellowship. He is a graduate of the Cooper Union School of Art in New York City.

Projections tickets are $15 for General Public and $10 for Members & Students. A $99 Projections All Access Pass will also be available for purchase. Visit filmlinc.org/NYFF for more information.

The 17-day New York Film Festival highlights the best in world cinema, featuring works from celebrated filmmakers as well as fresh new talent. The selection committee, chaired by Jones, also includes Dennis Lim, FSLC Director of Programming; Florence Almozini, FSLC Associate Director of Programming; Amy Taubin, Contributing Editor, Artforum and Film Comment; and Gavin Smith, who serves as a consultant.

Tickets for the 54th New York Film Festival are on sale now. To learn more about NYFF tickets, including a complete list of on-sale dates, prices, discount options, and our rush and standby policies, click here.

FILM SOCIETY OF LINCOLN CENTER
The Film Society of Lincoln Center is devoted to supporting the art and elevating the craft of cinema. The only branch of the world-renowned arts complex Lincoln Center to shine a light on the everlasting yet evolving importance of the moving image, this nonprofit organization was founded in 1969 to celebrate American and international film. Via year-round programming and discussions; its annual New York Film Festival; and its publications, including Film Comment, the U.S.’s premier magazine about films and film culture, the Film Society endeavors to make the discussion and appreciation of cinema accessible to a broader audience, as well as to ensure that it will remain an essential art form for years to come.

The Film Society receives generous, year-round support from American Airlines, The New York Times, HBO, The Kobal Collection, Variety, Loews Regency Hotel, Row NYC Hotel, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the New York State Council on the Arts.

Support for the New York Film Festival is also generously provided by Jaeger-LeCoultre, the Mayor’s Office of Media and Entertainment, and the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.

For more information about the New York Film Festival, visit filmlinc.org/NYFF. For the latest news, subscribe to the festival’s newsletter, follow the festival on Facebook and Twitter, and use the hashtag: #NYFF.

For media specific inquiries regarding the Film Society of Lincoln Center, please contact:

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