Crater

It starts with a sudden hole in the ground. As the narrator’s voice explains at the beginning of Adina Camhy’s Crater, a hole in the floor of her apartment opened up overnight – a negative space, the trace or scar of a mysterious event. Accompanying this narration, as in the rest of this stringently composed film essay, we see appropriated images of initially unexplained origin. Only at the end of the work, which was created out of a cooperation with Dan Robert Lahiani, do we learn that the material comes primarily from NASA sources, a geo-information producer, various YouTube channels, and the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial. What connects all of these finds is, on the one hand, the voiceover narrative, which draws a reflective arc based on various crater appearances on earth and in space: depth and abyss as evidence of past moments of violence. On the other hand, the frequently coarse-grained images, which are also interlocked through their surface structure, often reveal flaws: visual gaps as counterparts to a supposedly omnipotent vision.

The musically subtly accentuated network (with sound design by Margarethe Maierhofer-Lischka) spreads out over far-flung materials – and yet is held together concisely by the narrow encircling and multi-perspective illumination of the crater phenomenon. Key roles are played by the Ramon crater in the Negev desert, the Israeli astronaut Ilan Ramon, who named himself after this same crater, and a drawing by the Shoah victim Petr Ginz, who depicted the earth as seen from the craters of the moon. All of this and much more is congenially interwoven in this meditation on “dynamic memorials”, whose negativity continues to keep us focused. Getting used to the real hole in the ground at some point may have proved possible, but the intractable facets of the mental phenomenon have us feeling continually uneasy, and rightly so. (Christian Höller) 

Translation: John Wojtowicz

Orig. Title
Crater
Year
2022
Country
Austria
Duration
15 min
Director
Adina Camhy
Category
Experimental, Essay, Documentary, Short film
Orig. Language
English
Subtitles
German, English
Downloads
Filmstill (Image)
Filmstill (Image)
Filmstill (Image)
Credits
Director
Adina Camhy
Music
Margarethe Maierhofer-Lischka
Sound Design
Margarethe Maierhofer-Lischka
Soundmix
Stefan Ehgartner
Cooperation
Dan Robert Lahiani
Dramaturgical Advisor
Bettina Landl, Robin Klengel
Continuity
Adina Camhy
Narrator
Anne Kozeluh
Supported by
Stadt Graz, BMKOES
Sound Spatialization
Peter Venus
Available Formats
DCP 2K flat (Distribution Copy)
Aspect Ratio
16:9
Sound Format
5.1 surround
Frame Rate
25 fps
Color Format
colour, b/w
Digital File (prores, h264) (Distribution Copy)
Aspect Ratio
16:9
Sound Format
stereo
Frame Rate
25 fps
Color Format
colour, b/w
Festivals (Selection)
2022
Lissabon - DocLisboa
Graz - Diagonale, Festival des österreichischen Films
2023
Bristol - Encounters Short Film Festival
Santarcangelo di Romagna - nót filmfest
Regensburg - Kurzfilmwoche
2024
Athens - Athens Digital Arts Festival ADAF