by Yaara Bou Melhem, USA, Australia 2021, 98''
| SCREENPLAY: Yara Bou Melhem | SOUND: Richard Boxhall, Tom Schon, Christopher Jones, Ryan Agostino, John Smetana | |
| PHOTOGRAPHY: Tom Bannigan | PRODUCERS: Ivan O’Mahoney, Yaara Bou Melhem | |
| EDITING: Francisco Forbes | MUSIC: Helena Czajka |
Presented at the 15th edition of Lo schermo dell'arte, 2022Trained as a geographer and photographer, American artist Trevor Paglen (Camp Springs, 1974) investigates the opacity of the power structures and surveillance technologies that increasingly shape, affect and define our daily lives. In Unseen Skies the artist directs our gaze to the sky to ask ourselves how in recent decades the space around the Earth has become a battlefield where opposing forces challenge and control each other. The documentary focuses in particular on Orbital Reflector, a project born from the collaboration between the artist and the Nevada Museum of Art. Orbital Reflector is a 30-meter sculpture built from a light reflective material that, once in orbit, would open and inflate like a balloon. However, shortly after the launch on December 3, 2018, contacts with the satellite were interrupted, due to Trump's shutdown. Kazimir Malevich was the first artist to imagine art in space. In line with this early research, Trevor Paglen puts the role that exploration and discovery of the universe could assume in the near future at the center of the discussion.
Yaara Bou Melhem
(Sidney, Australia) is a journalist and filmmaker. She received two international UN Media Peace Awards; two New York Film & Television Festival Awards; a Hong Kong Human Rights Press Award; and five Walkley Awards. In 2019, Yaara was named the Australian Freelance Journalist of the Year. Unseen Skies is her first film.