EVENTIDE

A filmic musing on the future and the uncertainty that accompanies it. Set along the coast of Gotland, Sweden, during the annual Perseid meteor shower, a group searches the rocky shore and its sparse outcroppings of plant life in gentle pursuit of the unknown.

Evening is falling on the rocky dyke filmed by Sharon Lockhart, who invites us to reach out and feel the time contained in the frame: a material time, patiently carved out, the time needed to explore a landscape. A woman walks across the frame by the light of her phone. What is she looking for among the dark rocks? And what about the other people who join her? Shafts of light dance between the rocks. Evening turns into night and the stars rise up in the sky. The lights from the phones moving between the rocks mirror the constellations stretching over this mysterious search. The viewer can follow the movements of the stars and satellites. Another dance, faster and stranger still than the one on the ground, breaks out in the sky: it is danced by a shower of meteors, the Perseids, visible from the island of Gotland, in Sweden. Eyes on the ground, the newfound community pays little heed to the skies. A sense of disquiet emerges from this uncanny shift in attention. Giving flesh to the darkness of the night and to the quietest of sounds, the film hones in on the parting, the uniting, the moments of slowing-down and of coming-together-again. Who got lost under the sky? Under the earth? A ritual is performed, summoning a dark, unspeakable, distant force. The picture is scattered with sparkling lights and with the many visions conjured. Under a shower of meteors, Sharon Lockhart gives shape to the time and the stuff absence is made of, tracing the invisible in strokes of gold. 

Clémence Arrivé