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The Trembling Giant (2016) 19 mins, HD Video

NOW ALSO PUBLISHED IN SPECIAL ISSUE OF SCREENWORKS - Digital Ecologies and the Anthropocene, Vol 8.2

Screenings: BFI London Film Festival 2016 + Short Film Award Nominee — LES INATTENDUS | FESTIVAL 2018 — Mykonos Biennale 2017 — Image Forum Festival 2017 — Revelation Perth International Film Festival 2017 — Slamdance Film Festival 2017 — West Virginia Mountaineer Short Film Festival 2017 — Tabor Film Festival 2017 — Pori Film Festival 2016 — Besides The Screen Exhibition — Haverhill Experimental Film Festival 2016 — 20th Jihlava International Documentary Film Festival

 

 

The Trembling Giant is an experimental nature documentary that remediates the landscape of the American south-west by filming through the take-up reel of the projector itself. While we do not see the 16mm films playing on the projector, they nonetheless leave their trace as their passage through the mechanism warps the space in front of the camera, much as their soundtracks warp our reading of the landscape.

The Trembling Giant is also the name of a clonal colony of quaking aspen tree in Fish Lake Utah which, having survived for sixty thousand years, is now threatened by human interference. Thought to be the largest living organism in the world, this aspen colony is also known as Pando (Latin for ‘I Spread’) and is capable of putting up genetically identical stems from its single, vast root system. The bark of the quaking aspen tree provides one of the 38 Bach flower remedies and is thought to be the cure for any fear whose cause can't be named.