Screen/Society--'Shadows on the Globe' (shorts program)

"Shadows on the Globe": A program of short films at the intersection of geopolitics and geology Presented by the Experimental Film Lab at the Franklin Humanities Institute and Screen/Society == Program: "And still, it remains" (Turab Shah & Arwa Aburawa, 2023, 28 min, Algeria/UK, 28 min, DCP) Mertoutek is a village nestled in the Hoggar Mountains of Algeria's Southern Sahara and is home to the Escamaran community of Black Algerians. Surrounded by ancient rock art, the area was also the site of French nuclear bombs between 1961-66 and continues to suffer the consequences of radioactive fallout circulating in the water and soil. Summoning the landscape as a witness and protagonist; experiences of French nuclear experiments, faith and justice are narrated by the voices of multiple residents. By affording the residents distance from the lens, the film also pushes against forms of visual capture that reproduce a colonial gaze and challenges visibility as the currency for political redress. Winds migrating across the Sahara have recently carried sand containing nuclear remains back to France - a reminder that the environmental afterlives of colonialism cannot be contained or forgotten. "An Aviation Field" (Joana Pimenta, 2016, 14 min, Portugal, Digital) The newest work to emerge from Harvard's groundbreaking Sensory Ethnography Lab - the collective behind documentaries like "Leviathan", "Sweetgrass" and "Manakamana" - Joana Pimenta's mesmerizing short film is a ghost story about buried cities, lost civilizations and Western colonialism. "Altiplano" (Malena Szlam, 2018, 16 min, Canada/Chile/Argentina, 35mm) Filmed in the Andean Mountains in the traditional lands of the Atacameño, Aymara, and Calchaquí-Diaguita in Northern Chile and Northwest Argentina, ALTIPLANO takes place within a geological universe of ancestral salt flats, volcanic deserts, and coloured lakes. Fusing earth with sky, day with night, heartbeat with mountain, and mineral with iridescent cloud, it reveals a vibrating landscape in which a bright blue sun forever threatens to eclipse a blood-red moon. "ALTIPLANO ranks among the most striking landscape films of recent years and, indeed, calls for a revision of how we talk about landscape in cinema." - Dan Sullivan, Film Comment == Experimental Film Lab (EFL) website: https://fhi.duke.edu/labs/experimental-film-lab/ Parking Info: https://artscenter.duke.edu/parking