
Travis Wilkerson
Directing
Biography
Travis Wilkerson (born in 1969; Denver) is an American documentary film director, screenwriter, producer and performance artist. Named the "political conscience of 21st century American independent cinema," by Sight & Sound magazine, Wilkerson is heavily influenced by the Third Cinema movement, and known for films that combine "maximalist aesthetics and radical politics." This is owed, in part, to his meeting Cuban filmmaker Santiago Álvarez. Following the meeting, Wilkerson made the feature documentary Accelerated Under-Development about that meeting, and he was heavily involved in the rediscovery of Alvarez's films.
Known For

With the help of a German bounty hunter, a freed slave sets out to rescue his wife from a brutal Mississippi plantation owner.
Django Unchained

An experimental documentary exploring the turn-of-century lynching of union organizer Frank Little in Butte, Montana.
An Injury to One

“In 1946, my great-grandfather murdered a black man named Bill Spann and got away with it.” So begins Travis Wilkerson’s critically acclaimed documentary, DID YOU WONDER WHO FIRED THE GUN?, which takes us on a journey through the American South to uncover the truth behind a horrific incident and the societal mores that allowed it to happen. Acting as narrator and guide, Wilkerson spins a strange, frightening tale, incorporating scenes from TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD, the music of Janelle Monáe and Phil Ochs, and the story of Rosa Parks’ investigation into the Recy Taylor case, as well as his own family history, for a gripping investigation into our collective past and its echoes into the present day.
Did You Wonder Who Fired the Gun?

In depressed Butte, Montana, young men struggle to forge modest lives and make sense of it all.
Who Killed Cock Robin?

If there is anyone who embodies the current state of life in Croatia, it is the police detective Ivan Peric. The son of a fisherman, he became a detective as a way of avoiding working in the only really prospering industry of present-day Croatia – tourism. Now his life is consumed by trying to solve a series of essentially unsolvable murders of tourists. Because the tourists are so widely despised, no one will help Ivan. Evidence disappears into the labyrinth of bureaucracy. He is humiliated in public and online. In the local press, his boss even labels him an “uhljeb”, the Croatian slur for a “lazy bureaucratic parasite”. All of this takes place in the city of Split, where the breakup of Yugoslavia has left its mark.
Through the Graves the Wind Is Blowing

For the 150th anniversary of the Sand Creek Massacre, a simple pairing: images of the site of the Sand Creek Massacre in southeastern Colorado; the sounds of fireworks from my neighborhood recorded on the 4th of July.
For the 150th Anniversary of the Sand Creek Massacre

The opening, Los Angeles today, at dusk. In this first instalment of a series about the police in the United States, Travis Wilkerson seeks to trace the early activities of the Red Squad section of the municipal police, under the zealous tutelage of its figurehead in the 1920s and 30s, William “Red” Hynes. Of him, we only see a face and a gesture, revolver pointed at the person photographing him. His mission? To track down, flush out and threaten communist activists. Infiltration and intimidation were the lot of this political militia purposely created to break any hint of social or political subversion.
Los Angeles Red Squad: The Communist Situation in California

SAND CREEK EQUATION uses a poetic narrative style to explore the horrendous parallels linking the 2008-2009 war on the Gaza Strip with the 1864 Native American massacre in Sand Creek, Colorado.
Sand Creek Equation

The first of two two Videographic essays with critical reflections on representations of the Vietnam War. “Full Metal Kuleshov Effect,” counterposes the work of Stanley Kubrick with that of Santiago Alvarez and the Vietnamese director Hai Ninh.
Full Metal Kuleshov Effect

Taking inspiration from the collaborative 1967 militant anthology film Far from Vietnam, five of the boldest and most prominent American militant filmmakers unite to create this searing (and seething) omnibus work, employing a variety of approaches to reveal the hidden costs of the United States' (and Canada's) most expensive and longest-running war. (TIFF)
Far from Afghanistan

A reply to an earlier work – a radically digressive footnote – and the opening salvo of a new tendency. It is intensely personal and explores the relationship of storytelling to violence, to power, and to memory.
The Fuckee's Hymn

A haunted man desperately searches for his lost love through an illegal pirate radio broadcast. Punk-agit-noir.
Machine Gun or Typewriter?

A family trip across the American West becomes an essay film about nuclear threats past and present. The apocalypse is omnipresent, and the journey shows that destruction has long since become inscribed into the landscape and history of the country.
Nuclear Family
The second of two two Videographic essays with critical reflections on representations of the Vietnam War. “Disaffection Image,” uses the writings of Chinua Achebe and Gilles Deleuze to interrogate racist and colonial tropes in “Apocalypse Now.”
Disaffection Image

National Archive: V.1 uses archival U.S. military footage to depict a series of aerial attacks on Vietnamese sites. Simple and affecting, the work shares an affinity with Bruce Conners Crossroads by giving viewers time to contemplate the tragedy of war.
National Archive V.1

A monument to the Tlatelolco student massacre of 1968 in Mexico City, ten days before the Olympics. Hundred of students were disappeared. A grotesque tradition - the complete physical obliteration of students organizing for progressive change - was hurled into motion. This film is nearly wordless. In place of words, the enactment of violence against the images themselves, in a stagger towards commensurate aesthetics.
A Brief History of the Obliteration of Hope

Out of respect for his parents' request, four and one half minutes of silence for Michael Brown Jr. One minute for each hour his body lay in the streets of Ferguson, MO after he was shot to death by Officer Darren Wilson. Please watch in darkness. Please watch in silence.
For Michael Brown

A mysterious film. Nearly lost. A portrait of a 25 hour song. One hour for each year in the life of a friend.
Superior Elegy

A portrait of the great radical Cuban film maker Santiago Alvarez.
Accelerated Under-Development: In the Idiom of Santiago Alvarez

A father tells his sons the epic yet nonchalant tale of his airborne "exploits" in Vietnam.