“The human race is old, but rocks are timeless. Weaving stunning imagery with evocative text and interviews, Last Things observes the history of all of us and this planet Earth through the most essential parts — evolution and extinction, from the POV of rocks. The immensity of our existence is hard to fathom, and we are obsessed with our past, looking for reasons. A huge journey we should take on a cinema screen.
In a distinctive style seen throughout her long career, Deborah Stratman skillfully combines pure science with speculative fiction, not to give you an answer to the meaning of life, but to provide sounds, images, and ideas to contemplate. The use of both microscopic and landscape photography, we see the luscious textures of rocks and matter and our handprints on it. Texts from writers enhance the journey, ranging from the creators of the science fiction genre to experts of stream-of-consciousness reflections. Stratman blurs the borders of poetry, narrative, and fact in an ethereal adventure. As one interviewee states, ‘Rocks have a history, but they don’t remember it.’” -Sundance Film Festival
Preceded By:
It Will Die Out In The Mind
A short meditation on the possibility of spiritual existence and the paranormal in our information age. Texts are lifted from Andrei Tarkovsky’s film Stalker in which the Stalker’s daughter redeems his otherwise doomed spiritual journey. She offers him something more expansive and less explicable than logic or technology as the conceptual pillar of the human spirit.
Deborah Stratman | 2006 | 3:50 min | video
Laika
Some forms we can only know by their shadow. In homage to the spirits of space test dogs, or any being we use in the name of progress.
Deborah Stratman | 2021 | 4:33 min | HD video
