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Chain

Directed by Jem Cohen.
With Miho Nikaido, Mira Billotte, Tarik O'Regan.
US, 2004, 16mm transferred to digital video, color, 99 min.

Cohen reconfigured a three-channel installation piece titled Chain X Three into a more narrative, linear structure that follows two young women in different corners of the global economic spectrum. Both at the mercy of larger corporate forces—seen overwhelming the landscape in the form of malls, hotels, chain stores, highways and sprawl—each impassively and pragmatically respond to the stagnant alienation of the suburban miasma. Amanda is an American runaway, surviving off of abandoned spaces and complimentary coffee, whereas Tamiko is a scout for a large Japanese company sent to the States to study amusement parks. The film navigates a nowhereness that can be either alienating or comforting, but ultimately reveals the humanity even in this dead zone. Cohen acknowledges the beauty, humor and poignancy amid the bleak economic end games and the “superlandscape” of mass globalization, the homogenized encroachment of which is startlingly revealed in the film’s end credits.

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