Wednesday 11th September 2024
Location: The Watergate Theatre
I See a Darkness is a film essay probing the complex historical relationship between photography, cinema and science. The film builds on Katherine Waugh and Fergus Daly’s previous films which have screened internationally, drawing on material often overlooked or hidden: shadow archives, neglected cultural narratives in film, art and literature, disappeared or challenging areas of knowledge.

Shot in Paris, Death Valley, MIT and the Nevada nuclear test site, the film explores how new technologies of vision were from the outset aggressively instrumentalised by the military-industrial complex for its own ends. A mapping of the often contentious fusion of artistic and technological representational models of our world emerges, pivoting on three iconic figures whose lives and work intersected in compelling ways: Irish-born chrono-photographer Lucien Bull, Harold E. Edgerton (MIT Professor and Atomic test photographer), and oceanographer and conservationist Jacques Cousteau.

I See A Darkness ultimately questions what was disappeared in the ‘progressive’ narrative of image-capture technologies, especially considerations of the non-human and animal, and gestures towards what Jean-Christophe Bailly reminds us of when he writes: “the world in which we live is gazed upon by other beings, that the visible is shared among creatures, and that a politics should be invented on this basis, if it is not too late.
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DCP, 135mins, 2023

The film will be followed by a Q&A with filmmakers and Daniel Fitzpatrick (aemi).

Out of Focus emerged from the initiative of Kilkenny-based artists Juana Robles and Michael Higgins, aiming to showcase alternative cinema works often overlooked by conventional cinemas and mainstream avenues. This initiative strives to create a platform for artists, providing them with the opportunity to exhibit their work in a large, professional cinema setting.
Organisers Website

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