Requiem for the World As We Know It

Programme

• If the Antarctic Icecap Would Melt (10')

  Outtakes from a prophetic Fox newsreel from 1929 in which a huge wave submerges New York, scored by Stephen Horne. Only the tops of the skyscrapers are visible and the Statue of Liberty is up to her neck in water. Reminiscent of JG Ballard’s post-apocalyptic novel The Drowned World (1962), which is set in a London beneath the waves, where a handful of researchers gradually crack up as giant amphibians take over the city.

• Desert 79°. 3 Journeys Beyond the Known World (2010, 18')

  Three expeditions to the various shades of white around the North Pole. Three stuttering reports from polar explorers, filmed in different shades of white. Using a lot of archival footage from the Eye collection: The Greek Pytheas is the first to describe the Arctic Ocean (330 BC). Admiral John Ross meets the sole inhabitants of the universe on an unknown Arctic coast (1819). And after his hot-air balloon crashes on the way to the North Pole, Swedish inventor Andree sets out on the long walk back across the ice sheet (1897).

• Requiem for the World As We Know It (2020, 49')

  Farewell to an era. In this film, musicians and theatre-makers De Nieuwe Tijd travel to Greenland to play the last notes of the requiem composed by Harald Austbø there on a melting glacier. Along the way, they record the other parts of the requiem with local choirs, accompanied by the Octopus Ensemble from Antwerp.