Archipelago of Earthen Bones – To Bunya
Malena Szlam, 2024, 20 min

The latest in a cycle of films by Chilean artist and filmmaker Malena Szlam examining volcanic landscapes around the Pacific Rim, Archipelago of Earthen Bones – To Bunya focuses on the Bunya Mountains in the Beerwah region of eastern Australia. Made in the wake of the eruption of the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha'apai volcano in the Tongan archipelago, when an afterglow illuminated mountains across the range, Szlam explores the deep history and powerful geological forces that have shaped this ancient terrain. Filmed in 16mm, multiple in-camera exposures layer space and time like strata, drawing imagined cartographies where history and myth intertwine.

Suspicions About the Hidden Realities of Air
Sam Drake, 2025, 9 min

During the Cold War, the U.S. government developed a program of covert human radiation experiments, using its own citizens as test subjects. Suspicions About the Hidden Realities of Air is an elliptical exploration of this dark historical episode, operating across vast landscapes and individual human bodies. Fragments of archival and 16mm imagery – shot on expired film stock – evoke the locations of numerous test sites across the United States. Urban landscapes at night, bleached scenes of the American desert, and close-up details of rural America are interwoven with voice-over and on-screen text that reference testimony of the continuing impact of this period of covert testing.

When the Sun Is Eaten
Kevin Jerome Everson, 2025, 36 min

The latest in a series of works by Kevin Jerome Everson concerning solar and lunar eclipses, When the Sun is Eaten (Chi’bal K’iin) captures the total solar eclipse of 8th April, 2024 from three separate locations across North America. Shot in Super 8 and 16mm, in black and white and colour, Everson collaborated with cinematographers in Mazatlán, Mexico; Carbondale, Illinois; and Cleveland, Ohio to trace the phenomena of Earth, Moon, and Sun, lining up in space – the eclipse as celestial event.

Followed by Q&A with the filmmakers

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Showing as part of Open City Documentary Festival