films
A Mirror of the Cosmos - Trailer (2023)
A Mirror of the Cosmos is a feature-length sci-fi documentary which explores how the Mar Menor lagoon, located in southeastern Spain and considered a utopian paradise, went to the brink of extinction and beyond. Opening with a conversation between the moon and the sea about environmental violence, the film explores how the unlikely relationships between invasive blue crabs, nitrates, and mining deposits in Mar Menor deeply intertwine to tell the larger story of capitalism’s extractive, cumulative effects on the environment over time. The lagoon is a microcosm of the so-called Anthropocene, or ‘the Age of Man’. Ultimately, it asks what kinds of futures are possible, and can we adapt?
Email to get a link to the full film.
Email to get a link to the full film.
When Monsters Walked the Earth (2021)
Through the collective memory of a 250 million year old species, structures of exploitation, industrial monoculture, and interspecies relations are reframed through the plantationocene.
The Blessed Assurance (2018)
Every winter off the Georgia coast, fishermen reel in jellyfish from the same waters where shrimp once flourished. The Blessed Assurance is a sensorial documentary experience, a meditation on livelihood exploring both man and jellyfish in the otherworldly ecosystem found on an American trawl boat. Visceral images and sounds immerse us in a primordial world, de-centering the human and even going inside a jellyfish.
The River Runs Red (2018)
The River Runs Red is an award winning interactive documentary which decenters the human and looks at the more-than-human livability in a post-disaster landscape. What is suffering for the more-than-human in a post-disaster landscape? Is a disaster of these proportions ever truly quantifiable?
On November 5, 2015, the worlds worst tailings disaster occured: the foundations of an ire ore tailings dam from an iron-ore mine in Bento Rodrigues, Brazil, suddenly cracked. Located at the top of a river, 60 million cubic meters of toxic sludge rushed downstream until it spilled into the Atlantic Ocean. Deeply poisoning the water, the disaster effectively remapped an entire ecosystem. The dam is owned by the Australian BHP Billiton, the world's largest mining company. In many ways this is the classic example of environmental "disaster": sudden, brutish, toxic, preventable, man made.
There is no "whole story" to this disaster. There is no "one story" or one character which can represent it. Taking a fragmentary, indeterminate approach to answer our initial question, "What is suffering in na post-disaster landscape?" opens up the possibility of knowing other worlds, even creating a new way of knowing the world, instead of a narrow, single representation from one human character or ideology. We were especially interested in deconstructing linear narratives and making a multilinear project that would embed indeterminacy - the instability of the river, the instability of suffering, of compensation, and all the river's post-disaster inhabitants, human or non human - in its very fabric. Through a poetic dialectic we explore different themes in which the two opposing words on the screen are in conversation with each other, and our media is a type of "synthesis" that brings the two together. A "synthesis" menu then appears which leads into different possible dialectics.
theriverrunsred.com
*NOTE: CURRENTLY THE WEBSITE IS DOWN AND NOT WORKING AS OF 01/01/2023.
On November 5, 2015, the worlds worst tailings disaster occured: the foundations of an ire ore tailings dam from an iron-ore mine in Bento Rodrigues, Brazil, suddenly cracked. Located at the top of a river, 60 million cubic meters of toxic sludge rushed downstream until it spilled into the Atlantic Ocean. Deeply poisoning the water, the disaster effectively remapped an entire ecosystem. The dam is owned by the Australian BHP Billiton, the world's largest mining company. In many ways this is the classic example of environmental "disaster": sudden, brutish, toxic, preventable, man made.
There is no "whole story" to this disaster. There is no "one story" or one character which can represent it. Taking a fragmentary, indeterminate approach to answer our initial question, "What is suffering in na post-disaster landscape?" opens up the possibility of knowing other worlds, even creating a new way of knowing the world, instead of a narrow, single representation from one human character or ideology. We were especially interested in deconstructing linear narratives and making a multilinear project that would embed indeterminacy - the instability of the river, the instability of suffering, of compensation, and all the river's post-disaster inhabitants, human or non human - in its very fabric. Through a poetic dialectic we explore different themes in which the two opposing words on the screen are in conversation with each other, and our media is a type of "synthesis" that brings the two together. A "synthesis" menu then appears which leads into different possible dialectics.
theriverrunsred.com
*NOTE: CURRENTLY THE WEBSITE IS DOWN AND NOT WORKING AS OF 01/01/2023.
The Mississippi Multiverse (2020)
As meandering sources of life and arteries of the earth, rivers bridge land and water, and are crucial for life to flourish. Yet so many rivers have become wretched waters: sites of extensive mining waste, hydroextraction, oil refineries, pulp mills, radiation poisoning, and other irreversible environmental disasters. Over the last one hundred years, the Mississippi has amassed its own particular history that can be roughly sketched as a site that has gone from plantations to petrochemicals, with a stretch famously dubbed as “cancer alley” for the exponentially high rates of cancer in local communities. Rivers are fractal connectors, tying together entire continents, civilizations past and present, human with nonhuman, sediment with atoms. They’re a rich site to explore the far-reaching effects of climate change.
Entering these worlds has been my main collaborative research focus for the last five years, using experimental film methods to attune to these nonhuman stories. In my particular filmmaking approach and methods, I think critically through a type of embodied sensorial practice that focuses on encounters between humans and nonhumans. In doing so, I ask: what possibilities emerge for taking on complex space-time assemblages in the Mississippi that connect indigenous lifeworlds, colonialism, slavery, waterscapes, chemical legacies, invisible harm, and other long-lasting effects of various disasters? Every scene in The Mississippi Multiverse carries a multispecies narrative: whether it be the watery invasive water hyacinth fields, or the boat radio captain’s reading of the riverscape, or the procession of ants carrying foam from the water—right across from the DOW chemical plant.
Entering these worlds has been my main collaborative research focus for the last five years, using experimental film methods to attune to these nonhuman stories. In my particular filmmaking approach and methods, I think critically through a type of embodied sensorial practice that focuses on encounters between humans and nonhumans. In doing so, I ask: what possibilities emerge for taking on complex space-time assemblages in the Mississippi that connect indigenous lifeworlds, colonialism, slavery, waterscapes, chemical legacies, invisible harm, and other long-lasting effects of various disasters? Every scene in The Mississippi Multiverse carries a multispecies narrative: whether it be the watery invasive water hyacinth fields, or the boat radio captain’s reading of the riverscape, or the procession of ants carrying foam from the water—right across from the DOW chemical plant.
Polyps are a Pluriverse (2020)
Moon jellyfish polyps are latching onto natural gas platforms in the Adriatic Sea, using them as stepping stones to secure a footing in a marine environment otherwise too sandy for their proliferation. Bringing giant jellyfish blooms, these polyps are opportunistic world-builders glimpsing a coming multispecies age inadvertently inaugurated by fossil-fuel infrastructure. Featuring a fishing port in Chioggia, Italy, a marine biology station in Piran, Slovenia, and the vast sea in between, this film offers a non-linguistic experiment in sensory attunement to developing more-than-human submarine regions, approximating an Anthropocene surrealism. By following polyps, the film opens portals linking not just underwater geographies, but also a pluriverse of times, spaces, and potential futures.
A Mirror of the Earth (2021)
A small mining town in Southern Spain is riddled with cancer from just 36 years of open-pit mining. Telling the larger story of capitalism’s cumulative effects on an environment over time, Llano del Beal is a microcosm of slow violence and the so-called Anthropocene, or ‘the Age of Man’. And yet, it is also the site of what may be the oldest human remains in existence, anywhere in the world. Ultimately, the film asks what kinds of futures are possible, and can we adapt? This short film is based on a feature-length work called A Mirror of the Cosmos.
The Camel Race (2018)
A more-than-human & animal sensorial experience in four takes of the sport of camel racing in Qatar, complete with robot jockeys.
During Qatar’s economic boom in the 1970s, camels became eclipsed by cars. In 1974, in a bid to preserve his culture, the Emir of Qatar launched camel racing as an official organized sport with prizes. In 2005, after a human rights outcry over the use of slave-Sudanese child jockeys, human jockeys were banned altogether from the sport. As a result, robot jockeys were invented. Humans and nonhumans converge, fusing Qatar’s heritage, modern Bedouin identity, and technology in a reinvented twist on tradition.
During Qatar’s economic boom in the 1970s, camels became eclipsed by cars. In 1974, in a bid to preserve his culture, the Emir of Qatar launched camel racing as an official organized sport with prizes. In 2005, after a human rights outcry over the use of slave-Sudanese child jockeys, human jockeys were banned altogether from the sport. As a result, robot jockeys were invented. Humans and nonhumans converge, fusing Qatar’s heritage, modern Bedouin identity, and technology in a reinvented twist on tradition.
The Golden Snail Opera (2016/2019)
The Golden Snail Opera combines video and performance-oriented text into a genre-bending o-pei-la. This piece is a multispecies enactment of experimental natural history considering the “golden treasure snail,” imported to Taiwan in 1979, which is now major pest of rice agriculture. Whereas farmers in the Green Revolution’s legacy use poison to exterminate snails, a new generation of “friendly farmers” attempts to insert farming as one among many multispecies life ways within the paddy.
This film was co-created and published as a film AND text piece for the Cultural Anthropology journal. This means it is supposed to be viewed while reading an article alongside. The interface and original article can be found here.
This film was co-created and published as a film AND text piece for the Cultural Anthropology journal. This means it is supposed to be viewed while reading an article alongside. The interface and original article can be found here.
Archive
Trashborn - Trailer (2015)
Trashborn is a short documentary which follows seven families of trash divers over four years on a garbage dump in the Dominican Republic, using the dump as a central meeting point of all seven stories. These trash divers build their houses from garbage, eat thrown away scraps, and make pennies by scavenging metal, plastic, cardboard, and glass and yet — they are still able to share their hopes, loves, and dreams.
Baffle Their Minds with Bullsh*t, Kerry Leigh (2011)
At the age of three, Kerry Leigh was passing the hat while her father played the blues. She quit school in 7th grade to become a full time writer, performer and traveller. Now 26 years old, Kerry Leigh's act on Frenchmen Street in New Orleans rents out her imagination with a typewriter. She's a modern day scribe, an old soul in a young body and a brilliant writer doing what she does best, busking, on the best stage she's ever played, the street.
Mi Aldea Mi Langosta - Trailer (2012)
Along Nicaragua’s Miskito Coast, commercial lobster diving is the largest industry, employing over 5,000 Nicaraguans, mostly indigenous Miskito Indians. It’s an industry that affects the livelihoods of 50,000 men, women and children, and contributes millions of dollars to the regional economy. Since the early 1990s, over 90% of the lobster caught in Nicaragua has been exported to the United States and sold via international distributors to supermarkets and restaurant chains. Unlike small-scale fishing methods, the commercial diving industry uses SCUBA technology and large, re-purposed shrimping vessels to catch lobster in deep waters far off-shore.
They Will Return - Trailer (2012)
They Will Return” follows two Afghan teenagers, Fatima and Zahra, who are picked from remote villages in Afghanistan and sent to elite private boarding schools and colleges in the US. Strong-willed and independent, they are both committed to bringing change to women’s rights in Afghanistan. But once they’ve received a university-level education and experienced the Western world – with all its trappings – will they return?
Chasing the American Dream (2008)
This short documentary film examines border immigration issues between the U.S. and Mexico, recognizing the humanity in all of us. The "American Dream", an all too familiar notion to the foundation of American society, encapsulates the quest of Mexican immigrants who risk their lives by crossing the border for the hope of a better life.
Water Warriors (2009)
Will Copeland's poem "Water Warriors" is a powerful call to action for communities to fight back privatization efforts of corporations around the USA over the water supply, which is a basic human need and right. Will is a spoken word artist located in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
Palindrome (2009)
This is a “videopainting” about what society demands from us as either immigrants or citizens: to assimilate our individual identities and cultures into a larger mainstream persona. The metaphor of a mannequin — arriving from the factory with pre-painted makeup on large arresting eyes, pre-fab white skin, and the seemingly perfect bust — is evocative of the dehumanizing aspect of cultural assimilation. However, this image we construct to integrate into our cultural surroundings is often incomplete, tentative or conflictual; many find themselves going forwards and backwards with this facade, sometimes equally behind and in front of it. This short film is a palindromic painting of an emotional landscape that plays on the mirrors of identity, the multiple masks we offer in different settings, and our subconscious rebellion that emerges in times of epiphany.