Can a Landscape Tell its Own Story?
Three landscape films
Ralph Pritchard
Archipelago of Earthen
Bones—To Bunya
Director MALENA SZLAM
Year
2024
Country AUSTRALIA, CANADA
Suspicions About the Hidden Realities of Air
Director SAM DRAKE
Year
2025
Country
USA
When the Sun is Eaten (Chi’bal K’iin)
Director KEVIN JEROME EVERSON
Year
2025
Country USA
Hard sunlight makes the retina
flinch. Phantoms lurk in the darkness. Across these three films, there is a
persistent quivering. We’re in an uncanny place.
“I am the most thorough documentary filmmaker in the world”, said Stan Brakhage in 1973, “because I document the act of seeing as well as everything that the light brings me”. A towering figure of the 20th century avant-garde, Brakhage’s work was formally pioneering. But he was always animated by a sense of wonder: at bodies, light and nature. The recent trend in experimental documentary* is for films to explore an esoteric subject matter, alluding to it in a fragmented fashion, while elegant images and sounds unfurl on screen. Landscapes in such films are shown not simply for their inherent qualities, but for their hidden histories or political significance. This combined programme of landscape films offers a range of approaches to this content/form relation.
Each of the filmmakers approach the question of context differently. Can a landscape tell its own story? The aesthetic choices here are crucial.
In Malena Szlam’s films the topography pulsates and howls. The landscape of Archipelago of Earthen Bones—To Bunya is unpeopled. Flora vibrate in the wind. Time-lapses, double exposures and fluctuations of the aperture electrocute what might otherwise be a serene postcard scene. We’re in the rainforests of Queensland, Australia, in the afterglow of a volcanic eruption. The shaft of a palm tree at sunset glitters like a chest of gems. The sky is a ravishing impasto of turquoises and oranges. The resilience of the natural world is asserted.
Sam Drake’s Suspicions About the Hidden Realities of Air pans jerkily across remote locations in the US. Archival footage and audio imply clandestine government experiments.
These are studies conducted by the US Army during the Cold War, to ascertain the effects of radiation on the human body. Malevolent pylons score the land. Science jargon wafts just above our comprehension. One vast shot of the Nevada desert recalls a John Ford western. A vast, isolated space where human life is cheap. A circuit board of street-lamps and headlights shimmer into the distant darkness of the night. An underpass is rendered green by harsh, expired film stock. An x-ray video shows a tongue squirming inside a skull. Modernity emerges as a monstrous leviathan.
Kevin Jerome Everson closes the programme with When the Sun is Eaten, a structural film of a solar eclipse. Everson is best known for his extended portraits of American workers and the repetitive tasks they’re required to complete, as in Park Lanes (2015). The fundamental alienation of the worker to the means of production is resisted, briefly, by the generosity of Everson’s gaze, allowing the workers to be seen, rather than surveilled.
Everson applies this same generosity to a more immediate experience. During the eclipse, the grainy 16mm moon is fiery and unruly. Before and after, the emerging beam of sunlight blasts the frame. The ringing soundscape builds to prickly crescendos.
This convergence is shown from three locations in North America and bookended with a brief shot of an unknown viewer. There is something reassuring about this proxy audience member, bringing us, literally, down to earth, and ending on a powerful image of light, darkness and looking.
*The term ‘experimental documentary’ is borrowed from Genevieve Yue’s essay “The Accidental Outsider” in World Records, Volume 6. Yue proposes it as a provisional term, flawed, but useful enough to describe a common category of film festival.
Ralph Pritchard is a film director and occasional critic based in London. He is the Technical Manager of Open City Documentary Festival.
This text was commissioned by Open City Documentary Festival to accompany the programme ‘When the Sun is Eaten’ at Close-Up Cinema, 9 May 2025.
“I am the most thorough documentary filmmaker in the world”, said Stan Brakhage in 1973, “because I document the act of seeing as well as everything that the light brings me”. A towering figure of the 20th century avant-garde, Brakhage’s work was formally pioneering. But he was always animated by a sense of wonder: at bodies, light and nature. The recent trend in experimental documentary* is for films to explore an esoteric subject matter, alluding to it in a fragmented fashion, while elegant images and sounds unfurl on screen. Landscapes in such films are shown not simply for their inherent qualities, but for their hidden histories or political significance. This combined programme of landscape films offers a range of approaches to this content/form relation.
Each of the filmmakers approach the question of context differently. Can a landscape tell its own story? The aesthetic choices here are crucial.
In Malena Szlam’s films the topography pulsates and howls. The landscape of Archipelago of Earthen Bones—To Bunya is unpeopled. Flora vibrate in the wind. Time-lapses, double exposures and fluctuations of the aperture electrocute what might otherwise be a serene postcard scene. We’re in the rainforests of Queensland, Australia, in the afterglow of a volcanic eruption. The shaft of a palm tree at sunset glitters like a chest of gems. The sky is a ravishing impasto of turquoises and oranges. The resilience of the natural world is asserted.
Sam Drake’s Suspicions About the Hidden Realities of Air pans jerkily across remote locations in the US. Archival footage and audio imply clandestine government experiments.
These are studies conducted by the US Army during the Cold War, to ascertain the effects of radiation on the human body. Malevolent pylons score the land. Science jargon wafts just above our comprehension. One vast shot of the Nevada desert recalls a John Ford western. A vast, isolated space where human life is cheap. A circuit board of street-lamps and headlights shimmer into the distant darkness of the night. An underpass is rendered green by harsh, expired film stock. An x-ray video shows a tongue squirming inside a skull. Modernity emerges as a monstrous leviathan.
Kevin Jerome Everson closes the programme with When the Sun is Eaten, a structural film of a solar eclipse. Everson is best known for his extended portraits of American workers and the repetitive tasks they’re required to complete, as in Park Lanes (2015). The fundamental alienation of the worker to the means of production is resisted, briefly, by the generosity of Everson’s gaze, allowing the workers to be seen, rather than surveilled.
Everson applies this same generosity to a more immediate experience. During the eclipse, the grainy 16mm moon is fiery and unruly. Before and after, the emerging beam of sunlight blasts the frame. The ringing soundscape builds to prickly crescendos.
This convergence is shown from three locations in North America and bookended with a brief shot of an unknown viewer. There is something reassuring about this proxy audience member, bringing us, literally, down to earth, and ending on a powerful image of light, darkness and looking.
*The term ‘experimental documentary’ is borrowed from Genevieve Yue’s essay “The Accidental Outsider” in World Records, Volume 6. Yue proposes it as a provisional term, flawed, but useful enough to describe a common category of film festival.
Ralph Pritchard is a film director and occasional critic based in London. He is the Technical Manager of Open City Documentary Festival.
This text was commissioned by Open City Documentary Festival to accompany the programme ‘When the Sun is Eaten’ at Close-Up Cinema, 9 May 2025.