Underground

The shadow of a hand moves across the ground and over the bark of a tree. The hand belongs to a woman who wanders through this enigmatic film like a ghost—she remains invisible to the people alongside whom she materializes. Perhaps she is the past itself, summoned by the act of unearthing history, of digging into the soil.

Fragmented memories, transcending time and place, linger below the surface—in caves, in underground tunnels, at the bottom of an artificial lake. These places still hold the memory of the people who existed there, at some point in time, and bear the traces of what once happened. Sometimes stories can be heard here: stories of fear, love, suffering, and sacrifice.

To dig into the earth is to dig up the past. Building on her 2023 film Gama, Kaori Oda uses overlapping projections and sound sources to show time collapsing into layers—layers through which this mysterious woman moves, connecting people to one another.