2020

A Shape of Things to Come

ABOUT

Sundog lives out in the Sonoran Desert near the US-Mexico border. He is an elderly gentleman who lives off anything that the brutal nature gives him, be it a wild boar or the psychedelic poison of a toad. 'A Shape of Things to Come' gives precedence to the sensory materiality of the desert instead of to explanations and dialogue, and moves beyond the human scale and down to animal perspectives. It creates a world that stretches from a distant past in the ecological movements of the 1960s to a possible future in the aftermath of the apocalypse. But the border patrol agents are threatening the peace in Sundog's desert kingdom, which the armed recluse is prepared to defend. Lisa Marie Malloy and J.P. Sniadecki's film is equal parts 'Walden' and Western, but the magnificent isolation stands in paradoxical contrast to the great, smouldering problems of our times. With the desert as the ultimate existential (and cinematic) setting, the film shows the relationship between humanity and nature at a critical time, when civil disobedience is the provocative answer to the most pressing questions.

Program Feature
Runtime 1:19
Country United States
Language English, Spanish

JP Sniadecki is a filmmaker and media anthropologist whose work includes A Shape of Things to Come (2020), El Mar La Mar (2017), The Iron Ministry (2014), Yumen (2013), People’s Park (2012), Foreign Parts (2010), and Demolition (2008). He is a 2017 Guggenheim Fellowship recipient, a member of the China Observer editorial board, and a professor at Northwestern University, where he also serves as the Director of the MFA program in Documentary Media.

CREDITS

Director
Lisa Marie Malloy
JP Sniadecki
Producer
JP Sniadecki
Editor
Lisa Marie Malloy
JP Sniadecki
Editor
JP Sniadecki

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