The double bill of The Plagiarists and the experimental short This Action Lies brings together plagiarised memories, a discussion on authorship in late capitalism, and a meditation on plastic cups. Exploring the borderline territory between film and video art, the program invites the audience to revisit the nature of things that surround us.
The Plagiarists
Annoying hipster millennials Tyler and Anna are on their way to Philadelphia. When their car breaks down on the road, a charming elderly man named Clip invites them to spend a night at his house. Anna is enchanted by Clip’s story of his childhood but later discovers that it comes from a novel by Norwegian author Karl Ove Knausgård. Clip’s inexplicable lie prompts an important conversation.
Presented as a lo-fi mumblecore, The Plagiarists is in fact a philosophical inquiry into authenticity and its fate in the era of social media and transnational corporations. Texts and images get endlessly copied and dissolve in our environment. Spending days on the internet and digesting huge volumes of information, we all become plagiarists.
The Plagiarists
Director: Peter Parlow
USA, 2019. 106 min.
This Action Lies
In this deceptively simple film, the only object in the shot is a cup of coffee on a stand. An experimental work by one of the main representatives of the new American independent filmmaking, James N. Kienitz Wilkins, looks into the nature of observation.
This Action Lies
Director: James N. Kienitz Wilkins
USA, 2018. 32 min. 18+