Smiling Worker Coughs in Hand
2020 · 10m · USA
Directed by Ben Kitnick
Genres: documentary, essay film, experimental
Tones: contemplative, dark, surreal
A pandemic-era essay assembled entirely from corporate stock footage: high-fives, coffee breaks, team meetings. The smiling generic professionalism slowly mutates into dread as the footage starts coughing on itself.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
Made from the dead-eyed stock footage you skip past every day, and it turns out those are the scariest images we have. Pure found-object dread.
Pandemic-era found-footage essay in the Bruce Conner / Adam Curtis register — stock imagery weaponized against itself. Modest but pointed.
Built 100% from stock footage and weaponizes the most banal corporate imagery into a pandemic dread piece — the formal constraint is the entire point and it's a brilliant constraint.
Reviews
An unsettling atmosphere from its generic visuals... leaves a haunting impression.