Humanity’s imprint on the environment is pervasive and enduring – the marks we leave outlive us and distort our landscape, obscuring it with ghosts of forgotten pasts and promised futures. This selection of films documents those marks made – and the narratives we construct in their wake.

There Lived the Colliers
Nelson MacDonald | 2017 | Canada | 7′

Between 1850 and 1920 thousands of wooden duplexes were built in Nova Scotia by coal companies to house the influx of workers from Europe and the Caribbean. Today, decades after the last coal mine closed, the houses remain. Shot on 16mm, There Lived the Colliers relies on images of the simple homes to suggest the personality, resilience, hardship and history of the people who have inhabited this place for the last 150 years.

Graven Image
Sierra Pettengill | 2018 | USA | 11′

Using over 100 years of archival footage, director Sierra Pettengill explores the history of the largest Confederate monument, Georgia’s Stone Mountain.

Stone Engravings and the Three-Colored Chickenpox Tale
Luciana Mazeto & Vinícius Lopes | 2017 | Brazil | 20′

Hidden within the first signs of mankind found in the south of Brazil, side by side sit the visible and the invisible parts of a story.

Plastic Man
Yulia Kovanova | 2017 | UK | 10′ | Best UK Short Award Nominee

Breaking from daily reality, a man transforms into ‘Plastic Man’ – armed with chemicals, ready to set the landscape on fire. Is he the destroyer of nature, or the voice of its resilience?

Then a Hero Comes Along
Marlon Rouse Tavares | 2017 | UK, India | 20′ | Best UK Short Award Nominee

For the last 18 years, Vashi Bridge, linking Mumbai and Navi Mumbai, has been a popular site for suicide. Rajaram Joshi is a fisherman in the waters below the bridge who has watched people jump from the bridge since its construction. From 2012, he’s saved more than twenty jumpers and recovered the bodies of many more. Raju is loud, rude, funny, arrogant, but he can also be poetic and a dreamer. Some call him a hero, but those that speak to the other local fishermen my find that some have a different story to tell.

The Fear of Dying in Transit
Ian Purnell | 2018 | Germany, Switzerland | 29′

A hypnotic journey through the landscape of an underground construction site. Shot around the opening of the Gotthard Base Tunnel in Switzerland, architectural observations blend with safety rituals. Facts dissolve within the realm of phobias and science fiction.

(Total Running Time: 97′)