Sea of Clouds / 雲海 reflects on the relationship between images and their possible narration. Filmed on six 100ft rolls of 16mm film in and around the island of Taiwan the film is structured around an interview with contemporary artist Chen Chieh-Jen. The film explores the relationship between film, landscape and rural life and the layered histories of these sites as potential places of self-organisation and resistance. Built around the question of translation and the relationship of what we hear to what we see, the film follows Chen’s retelling of the farmer’s tradition of using film screenings as means of covert political assembly during the Japanese colonial rule of Taiwan. Existing in the gap between what is seen and what is heard, what is spoken and what is translated, the film attempts to map the contours, slippages and broader resonances of landscapes and distant lives, between sentimental feelings and historical echoes, between Mandarin and English, between Taiwan’s complex history and its present. The title is an English translation of the Chinese term 雲海 / yúnhai, used to describe the view from Taiwan’s highest mountains when everything below is hidden from view by a sea of clouds.

In the presence of George Clark.

“I think that the people of my country are ignorant of our history and I feel that it is my mission to make them know some of it and let the others go on with the rest. I regard cinema not as a consumerist art, but as a historical document for the next generations.” (Shadi Abdel Salam c. 1986)

A Distant Echo explores themes of myth, identity, culture and the construction of history. Shot on 35mm film, the film plays with movement and light in deserts across Southern California. The landscapes are layered with a dialogue between explorers, revealing the negotiations between an archaeologist from Cairo with members ofa tribe who guard ancient tombs lost in the desert. The scenario for the film was adapted from the 1969 Egyptian film A Night of Counting the Years / Al-Mummia directed by Shadi Abdel Salam, creating a layered story that echoes from ancient Egypt to the diversity of desert ecology and recent archaeological digs for lost Hollywood film sets. Working in collaboration with the musician and composer Tom Challenger a new choral composition was created and recorded for the film, drawing on traditional and modern acoustic techniques to reflect the shifting sands of the desert landscapes.