They Shine

2007, English. Directed by Rosa Barba.

The 35mm film They Shine is set in the Californian Mojave Desert. Thousands of enormous solar panels punctuate the vast American desert. The panels – glistening machinery, slowly changing position to follow the sunrise – configure a mirror surface behind which another world unravels: divorced from technological reality, and guided by an equally disconnected, utopian and/or religious faith associated with the power of technology. The film intertwines scenes of the moving solar panels, performing a slow dance or refined choreography, with voices of people from the local community who express their thoughts about the future and talk about the images evoked by these machines. A site dominated by an extreme natural condition is no longer simply re-identified by its scientific exploitation for humankind, but moreover re-evolves as a transfigured 'second nature': a surface as impenetrable as the desert that it covers.

Runtime

0h 4m

Post-credits

None listed

Language

English

Rated

Check local

Start now and it ends at ….