Film · 2020

Dark Matter

experimental film

The camera hovers above the Mir diamond mine in Sakha, northeastern Siberia, one of Earth's largest kimberlite pipes. This colossal crater spans a continuum of Soviet and Russian resource politics from Stalin to Putin, where technology and ideology inscribe military and economic imperatives into a landscape transformed by radioactive residues and industrial toxicity. Dark earth is excavated and transported, the images governed by extraction processes that sustained the Soviet Union through Sakha's mineral wealth. Out of dense nocturnal fog, debris and dimly lit industrial plants slowly crystallize, apocalyptic scenery alternating with undulating earthworks evoking folds of velvet. The observational camera remains still, registering rather than narrating, while a finely arranged soundscape transmits the ceaseless whirring of machines. Finally, the camera descends into the open pit, its contours dissolving into darkness, like an infinitely slow fall into bottomless depths.