Tag: species

Water Body

Water Body

Artists / Directors – Barney Steel, Ersin Han Ersin, Robin McNicholas – 2026 – UK – 25m

*****

A sensory experience centred around a moving image of the Thames as part of the global water network based on data sets – installation at St. Martin-in-the-Fields crypt 12:30-21:00 hours from Saturday, October 3rd to Sunday, October 18th as part of the London Film Festival’s LFF Expanded strand

A little waiting area shows a series of hand-crafted hangings by artist Elena Landinez showing various river tributaries before you enter the experience space proper. Before entering that space, you are alerted to the fact that the experience includes a total blackout section, also that there are pottery vessels handmade by ceramicist Ludmilla Balkis inside the space for you to take containing water that was cloud some two weeks ago, from which you can drink. Seating is mostly bean bags on the floor, and a single row of conventional seating at the back.

So I’m sitting on a seat at the back – or is it the back? – not really knowing what to expect. The lights go down: total blackout. All around me, sounds. (These started, I think, before the blackout, as if little rivulets of water were running somewhere.)… Read the rest

Tags abstract, Antarctica, Astrida Neimanis, Barney Steel, blackout, blue, ceramic, cloud, colour, computer model, data set, Earth, Elena Landinez, Ersin Han Ersin, Europe, five senses, global water network, globe, hand-crafted, hanging, installation, James Bulley, LFF, LFF 2026, LFF Expanded, LFF Expanded 2026, London Film Festival, London Film Festival 2026, Ludmilla Balkis, map, Mark Rothko, Marshmallow Laser Feast, migration, movement, nature, patterns in motion, penguins, planet, plankton, pottery vessels, River Thames, river tributaries, rivulet, Robert McFarlane, Robin McNicholas, seabirds, sharks, simulation, sip, sound field, species, species migration, surface, surface area, Thames Estuary, turtles, waiting area, water, whales

Documentary Features Live Action Movies

Super Nature

Super Nature

Director – Ed Sayers – 2025 – UK – Cert. PG – 82m

*****

The process of shooting the natural world on the Super 8 amateur home movie format of the 1970s brings a participating community of people closer to nature – out in UK cinemas on Friday, September 4th

This starts and ends with the image zooming in to and zooming out from Super 8 footage. The Kodak Super 8 system was the premier format for home movies in the late1960s through the 1970s before it was replaced for the most part by videotape in the 1980s.

For some years, Ed Sayers was involved in a Super 8 film competition wherein punters would enter their films, and most of the material was much the same – family memories or holiday footage. Some of it extremely wild. As he puts it, the medium “painted our memories on film.”

One year, a very different submission turned up from a Frenchman named Roger. Roger had shot footage of flamingoes.

The nature of Super 8 was that the film came on little cartridges of reversal film inserted into the camera. In terms of footage, the cartridges didn’t run that long. You’d shoot by squeezing the trigger, which would stop filming when released. … Read the rest

Tags 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, amateur, amateur film format, amateur home movie format, American White Buffalo, artificial insemination, balcony, beach, camera, cartridge, clean up, close to nature, coast, colonialist, Delhi, desert quail, destruction, Ed Sayers, extermination, film cartridges, flamingo, forest, forest fire, format, framing, France, Frenchwoman, guilt, home movie, insect, kangaroo, Kenya, Kodak, look, miles from land, monkey, movie format, natural world, nature, Norfolk, Northern White Rhino, Pacific Ocean, patio, pull the trigger, rain, reversal film, roadside sellers, rural and urban, sadness, seals, ship, snail, species, storm, Super 8, Super 8 film competition, Super 8 footage, Super 8 users, Super Nature, tipping point, UK, weirdness

Documentary Features Live Action Movies

Underland

Underland

Director – Rob Petit – 2025 – US, UK – Cert. 12a – 79m

***

Three separate journeys beneath the Earth’s surface in the company of an archaeologist, a particle physicist and an urban explorer – had its sold out UK Premiere at the Barbican on Tuesday, March 24th and is out in UK cinemas on Friday, March 27th

Why do we seek the void, asks a narrator (Sandra Hüller from Project Hail Mary, Phil Lord, Christopher Miller, 2026; The Zone of Interest, Jonathan Glazer, 2023; Anatomy of a Fall, Justine Triet, 2023) as the camera descends into an Academy 4:3 image of an orifice within an ash tree, a portal to the world below. In a letterboxed image, we’re in a car passing the garish lists of Las Vegas entertainments, then on to breach a wire fence on the outskirts of that city. Then with a group of women cavers in a jungle, possibly South America somewhere, near a tree on the edge of a vast hole in the ground. Another group of cavers stand around in a room in readiness. A further caver walks down an urban street and starts to lift a manhole cover.… Read the rest

Tags abandoned, archaeologist, atom bomb, beam of light, beneath the Earth’s surface, bomb shelter, boundaries, Bradley Garrett, broken fridge, burial, cave, chamber, charcoal, city, civilization, concrete, cow falling, dark matter, darkness, deep, deep mine, drainage, drains, earlier generations, Earth, entrance to the Underworld, experiment, exploration, Fátima Tec Pool, feeling of freedom, firelight, flash flood, frustration, future generations, hands on walls, Hannah Peel, hole by the tree, human beings, impression, interference, journey, Las Vegas, life form, light beam, London, low oxygen, man-made, manhole cover, map, Mariangela Lisanti. Canada, Mexico, mine, mining cage, narrow passages, narrow space, networks of caves, nuclear waste, odours, plunder, poverty below ground, radiation, rain, recurring dream, research facility, Rob Petit, rubbish, search, seek the void, sensitive experiment, sewage, skyscrapers, smell, SNOLAB, species, stalk, storage, storm drain, storm drains, technology, the living and the dead, theoretical particle physicist, touch the shadows, toxic waste, trapped, trash, tunnel, two kilometres down, UK, underground, underground exploration, Underland, underworld, unknown, Uranium, urban explorer, urban explorers, US, veins pumping, warning signs, wealth, writer, Yucatán Peninsular

Features Live Action Movies

The Shape Of Water

Loving the alien

The Shape Of Water
Directed by Guillermo del Toro
Certificate 15, 123 minutes
Released 14 February 2018

There’s a tradition in horror films and fairytales that the monster is bad. The Shape Of Water is a fairytale that features a monster (Doug Jones) who is viewed very differently by different characters. To the military security man, Strickland (Michael Shannon), it’s an affront to the image of God, in which man is created, which must be brutally subdued. To the scientist and Russian agent, Hoffstetler (Michael Stuhlbarg), he’s an intelligent being from whom our species has much to learn and who should be kept alive at all costs and treated with respect – rather than killed and dissected as the authorities suggest. And to the mute cleaning lady, Elisa (Sally Hawkins), who subsequently falls in love with him, he’s someone who responds to hard-boiled eggs and Benny Goodman records, and sees her for herself rather than for her so-called disability… [read more]

Read the full review in Reformed February 2018.

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