Making of Earths

Abstract

To observe a total eclipse, one would need to be in the umbra, the darkest part of the shadow cast by an occluding body, the moon, over the main source of light, the sun. Green and eerie lavender shadows would settle as the sky darkens in an awed hush, the obscured sun would black out, like glowing coal. The history of predicting the celestial event was also the history of linear time, storm prediction, the global market.

The film circuits inside a cinema-globe situated at the centre of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Thai and Chinese ground-stations, climate research centres, conference halls and landscapes under transformation. Through the documentary’s disorientating gaze, the film unsettles the certainty of knowing by tracing threads of strategic collaborations within a growing network of bodies gathering data on the changing Earth.