Archipelago of Earthen Bones + Eastern Anthems - Rewire Festival

This slot consists of the following films:

Archipelago of Earthen Bones — To Bunya (Malena Szlam, 20 min, 2024): Poetic visuals and whirring sound coalesce in this evocative film by artist and filmmaker Malena Szlam. Archipelago of Earthen Bones — To Bunya unfolds across a different kind of space-time; taking the concept of "volcanic time" into consideration, the film presents a stirring portrait of the immense beauty and mammoth wonder of the planet and its inconceivably vast ecologies and lifeworlds – of nature and of sound. Szlam's world-spanning 16mm footage – which arrives like a testament from the Earth's crust itself – is given vibrational breath by its accompanying soundscape, composed by artist Lawrence English.

No dialogue, no subtitles.

Eastern Anthems (Matthew Wolkow and Jean-Jacques Martinod, 75 min, 2024): Eastern Anthems tells the tale of the American Great Eastern Brood X cicadas who lay dormant underground for 17 years before re-emerging to spread across the US during the Covid-19 lockdown. The film, an exquisite corpse–style letter between two insect-loving artist friends – Matthew Wolkow and Jean-Jacques Martinod – traces the tenuous line between order and chaos, as signified by the sonic disorder left in the wake of this orchestra of cicadas – droning in harmony. This experimental documentary portrays the possibilities for using film as a conversational medium – not only between the two filmmakers, but between insects and humans, and between people's sociopolitical realities and their surrounding ecologies.

English, Spanish and French spoken, English subtitles.