Nature

Circle in the Sand, Michael Robinson

In a broken near future, a band of listless vagabonds ambles across a war-torn coastal territory, supervised and sorted by a group of idle soldiers. Rummaging, stuttering, and smashing through the leftovers of Western culture, these ragged souls conjure an unstable magic, fueled by their own apathy and the poisonous histories imbedded in their unearthed junk. Suspicion, boredom, garbage, and glamour conspire in the languid pageantry of ruin. Feel the breeze in your hair, and the world crumbling through your fingers.

Movements of an impossible time, Flatform

An abandoned rural house, the Ravel Quartet in F major and then rain, wind, snow and fog are the elements of which this video is composed. In an impossible procession, one take presents four atmospheric agents to strike against the house. The musical instruments which follow the quartet each become an audio track which corresponds to each one of the atmospheric agents. So the sound of the first violin drips like the rain, that one of the second violin is muffled like the snow, the sound of the viola moves like the wind and that one of the cello vibrates like the fog.

A place to come, Flatform

A man with two dogs crosses a landscape. A person walks along a ridge and stops to look at the skyline. Other people run while nature shrinks back to its enigmaticness. In this video landscape doesn’t evolve according to simple time curves, but according to the particular mode of crossing of a weather element: fog.

Sam Easterson, Nest-Cams

Nest-Cams features footage from cameras placed in and around nests. Animals showcased include: black-capped chickadee, red squirrel, house wren, horned lark, red-breasted nuthatch, black tern, brook trout, and song sparrow.

Sam Easterson, Burrow-Cams

Burrow-Cams features footage from cameras that have been placed inside underground animal habitats (dens, burrows, etc.). Animals showcased include: burrowing owl, black-footed ferret, porcupine, badger, prairie vole, swift fox, deer mouse, and black tailed prairie dog.

Lesser Apes

Lesser Apes tells the story of a love affair between a primatologist, Farrah, and a female bonobo ape, Meema. Bonobos are the species with which humans share the most DNA, but unlike our species, they are matriarchal, live without conflict, and are unabashedly sexual. A paean to perversion, the film combines animation, live action and song to challenge attitudes about sex, language and our relationship to nature.

Rosa Barba, Somnium

Rosa Barba produced a science fiction film based on interviews with local residents and individuals involved in the land suppletion project for Maasvlakte 2. Barba asked the interviewees to imagine what this new land could look like in the future. While we see images of the new land, the slufter: a storage reservoir for heavily contaminated sludge from the new Meuse river, the construction of the huge docksides, basalt blocks, empty containers and the mechanical movements of the transhipment process, we listen to a story apparently taking place in the future.

Twelve Scenes

Originating from personal affection toward Seoul, Twelve Scenes portrays the spectacles in daily life by juxtaposing urban space in a twelve month sequence. As the individual particles in a kaleidoscope create splendid illusions by being reflected on a mirror, Twelve Scenes shows our individual life, seemingly separated by time and space, actually composes the scenery in the kaleidoscope of Seoul. Twelve Scenes represents a 'moment for self-reflection' or 'small, but precious enlightenment on life'.

Jungle Thrills

"Nature on a rampage in a land gone mad!!", quotes this fake promo.

-- Mike Kuchar

Observers, The

The Observers portrays one of the world's last staffed weather observatories in two different seasons. Extreme and unpredictable, the land and sky of Mount Washington, New Hampshire form a varying frame for a climatologist as she goes about the solitary and steadfast work of measuring and recording the weather.

Hotspell

This final weather diary travels through some rough inner and outer domains.  Social interactions blend more smoothly than the clash of air masses which threaten to clobber a prairie town in a vortex of violence.

Flashbacks and flashpoints flare-up along with thunderheads that loom and boom with vibrations of doom, their every move charted with vivid vibrancy on videographic maps which detail developing devastation.

Desire and death are in the air along with some aromatic wisps of ethnic edibles, so be sure to sniff it all.

 

Outwardly from Earth's Center

Outwardly from Earth's Center is a fictitious narrative about a society on an unstable piece of land that is in danger of disappearance. The situation requires the population's collective initiative in order to secure individual survival and to allow the society to remain. The concept's background is somewhat realistic since Sandön moves approximately one meter per year.

Animal Attraction

Animal Attraction is a documentary about the relationship between people and animals that questions the way we project our hopes and desires onto our pets, and ascribe human qualities and attributes to their gestures. The video was inspired by the plight of the filmmaker who was frustrated by the obnoxious behavior of her cat, Ernie. As a last resort, she gave in to a friend's suggestion to contact an animal communicator. This is her journey with interspecies telepathic communicator, Dawn Hayman, from Spring Farm CARES, an animal sanctuary in upstate New York.

Animal-Cams

"I just can't resist trying to empathize with animals and plants.  I think that in the process of attempting to learn what it's like to be an animal or plant, I learn more about what it means to be human."
--Sam Easterson

The Empirical Effect

"Living on the slopes of the volcano Vesuvius is a strange contradiction: always in stress and yet also sleepy, waiting for what might happen. In close cooperation with the Osservatorio Vesuviano and several inhabitants of the 'Red Zone' of the volcano, Rosa Barba constructs a lyrical portrait of this area, which shelters Mafia members and illegal Chinese immigrants. Historic footage, measurements, maps and aerial shots try to capture what is always uncertain."

--International Film Festival Rotterdam, 2010