Architectures of Social Crisis in Melanie Gilligan's Films Against Capitalism

This article takes as its principle subject the work of artist Melanie Gilligan, in particular two serial-films that comprise part of her recent project, Films Against Capitalism. These films address capitalism’s polycrisis – its economic, social, and health crises – through its manifestations in the present. Crowds (2019) is an allegorical docu-fiction series that takes Orlando, Florida as its object of investigation, specifically as a town undergoing a process of gradual impoverishment.1) It follows a young woman named Irene as she drifts through the low-waged service economy that serves the tourist industry. Irene’s semi-fictional encounters are interwoven with interviews with workers and members of the labor union Unite Here about their experiences, their ‘social consciousness,’ and their economic anxieties, introducing docu-mentary elements into the film.2) In contrast to the individuated perspective in Crowds, Home Together (2022), to which I will make passing reference in this article, is a docu-fiction series that looks at the idea of community, and specifically, communities of older people who have made the decision to live collectively in order to fight the alienating effects of isolation, both in the context of Covid-19 and more broadly in relation to aging.