AFTERLIVES
Details
2025 DE BE FR I 88’ I desktop documentary I English
First feature film
Quotes
"visceral and straightforwardly emotional" - Cineuropa
"Afterlives is a dedicated, reflective documentary,
the bell of its urgency ringing far into the past and into the futures of images." -The Film Stage
Synopsis
In his first feature-length desktop documentary for cinema, filmmaker Kevin B. Lee delves into the historical traces of extremist propaganda and the efforts of those resisting its violent impacts. 'Afterlives' explores how to confront the violence encoded in this media, reaching beyond its toxic effects to engage power structures spanning from the colonial past to the digital age. Moving between virtual and physical environments, the film encounters an artist, an activist and a researcher, who each use the legacy of violent extremism to create new images and narratives with new possibilities for the future.
Festivals
DOCLISBOA (Portugal), BFI London (UK), Stockholm IFF (Sweden)
Credits
Directed by Kevin B. Lee
Produced by Caroline Kirberg, pong film (Germany)
Co-produced by Beata Saboova Vincent Metzinger, Naoko Films (Belgium) & Pivonka Production (France)
With the support of the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media (Die Beauftragte der Bundesregierung für Kultur und Medien), Eurimages, the Centre du Cinéma et de l’Audiovisuel de la Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles, Field of Vision, the Belgian Tax Shelter, and the Centre National des Arts Plastiques.
Director’s Bio
Kevin B. Lee is a filmmaker, media artist, and critic. He has produced over 360 video essays exploring film and media.
His award-winning Transformers: The Premake introduced the “desktop documentary” format, was named one of the best documentaries of 2014 by Sight & Sound and screened in many festivals including Berlin Critics Week, Rotterdam International Film Festival and Viennale International Film Festival.
Through Bottled Songs, his collaborative project with Chloé Galibert-Laîné, he was awarded the 2018 Sundance Institute Art of Nonfiction Grant, the 2018 European Media Artist Platform Residency, and the 2019 Eurimages Lab Project Award at Karlovy Vary International Film Festival.
He was 2017 Artist in Residence of the Harun Farocki Institut in Berlin. In 2019 he produced “Learning Farocki”, a series of video essays on Harun Farocki, commissioned by the Goethe Institut. In 2020 he is co-curating the Black Lives Matter Video Essay Playlist with Will DiGravio and Cydnii Wilde Harris.
He was Founding Editor and Chief Video Essayist at Fandor from 2011-2016, supervising producer at Roger Ebert Presents At the Movies, and has written for The New York Times, Sight & Sound, Slate and Indiewire. He is Professor of the Future of Cinema and Audiovisual Arts at Università della Svizzera Italiana in Lugano in corporation with the Locarno Film Festival.
Filmography
2022 PIAZZA FUTURA (Postcard from the Future), short
2020 BOTTLED SONGS 1-4 , short
2020 ONCE UPON A SCREEN: EXLOSIVE PARADOX, short
2014 TRANSFORMERS: THE PREMAKE, short
