Set in the landscapes of Los Angeles, this hybrid documentary seeks to explore harmful cyclical occurrences that exploit natural resources and bring us closer to extinction. Following the discovery of a mysterious metal structure in the desert, this film documents the encased objects found within the structure. This film is made up of speculative recreations of the study conducted, analysis of the found objects, and surrounding landscapes.
This pseudo diary film is made of found materials from an unfinished 16mm film. Potenciais à Deriva is a film started by a Brazilian artist under a pseudonym while living in exile in Los Angeles, California. Isolated shots and previously assembled scenes reveal an intention to create a mysterious film comprised of disembodied interviews, empty rooms, radio recordings, soccer games, and sudden apparitions of the filmmaker that slowly ruminates on Brazil's colonial past, North American Imperialism and the military dictatorship of the time in a paranoid and anxious manner. Be aware that the film's final version never came to exist. This version presented is my mere attempt to produce a film with these otherwise lost images.
In 1934 an experiment by an amateur-scientist couple began. Named after a genus of moths, the Automeris Project placed a group of young children in an enclosed forest, leaving them to fend for themselves. On return visits, the couple presented self-made films, accompanied by live music, depicting the outside world. For them, these images were the perfect replica of reality seen in their expeditions. Nevertheless, the films were carefully framed, edited, and manipulated to induce a transformation and provoke the development of a new society.
The great voyages to the "New World" were seen as expanding the frontiers of the visible and displacing those of the invisible, therefore maps from that time render the real and imaginary. The film follows a voyage of the Brazilian Military in search of an imaginary island with the same name as their country. In the myth from 1483 Brazil, or Hy-Brazil, is known to exist to the west of Ireland and above the Fortunate Islands. Visão do Paraíso is an examination of the capacity of the human imagination and computer simulations to construct environments. Amidst the fine threshold of the real, simulated, and imagined, the film analyzes the contemporary ideas of virtual reality and their ambition to expand the frontiers of the physical world into a "New World".
