A young Japanese scout is sent by some corporation to research the amusement park industry in the USA. Meanwhile another woman, a working-class cleaner, survives on the fringes of corporate society - she eats, sleeps and basically lives in a motel or shopping mall. Both women find themselves in the middle of American or rather global nowhere and both feel desolated there.
Chain shows a contemporary world as a deserted corporate landscape that consists of different non-places - hotels, motels, malls, fast-food restaurants, gas stations, airports, theme parks - which are the same everywhere. These global chains are impersonal and reduce an individual to an anonymous worker or consumer who becomes just a function of this machine. Focusing on the existential side of the process, Jem Cohen makes a disturbing and absolutely hypnotic study of contemporary alienation, solitude and non-existence.
- Director
- Jem Cohen
- Countries of production
- USA, Germany
- Year
- 2004
- Festival Edition
- IFFR 2016
- Length
- 99'
- Medium
- DCP
- Language
- English
- Producers
- Jem Cohen, Mary Jane Skalski
- Production Company
- Antidote Films
- Sales
- Video Data Bank (VDB)
- Screenplay
- Jem Cohen
- Cinematography
- Jem Cohen
- Editor
- Davey Frankel, Jem Cohen
- Cast
- Nikaido Miho
- Website
- http://jemcohenfilms.com