'Chain' -- A New Film About Sprawl

When filmmaker Jem Cohen realized that he "could travel anywhere in the world and shoot footage that you couldn't identify in terms of where it came from" he decided to make a movie that explored the "superlandscape" of shopping malls, parking lots and freeways. "The full power of...Chain doesn't hit until the closing credits, which reveal that the movie's anonymous landscape of chain stores and highway interchanges was shot in seven countries and 11 American states...Cohen has become an archivist of public space at a time when much of that space has been colonised - and de-historicised - by corporations and transient consumer desires."