Foundations of the Work of the Sun

In the end, all the benefits must not be consumed by time. Therefore, where the Sun works, the overall untidiness of the world is replaced by new foundations. Short narrative of the legs - factographic poem about the journey to work. "Leibniz inspired poem in a setting of Andrej Platonov's pit." The Foundations of the Work of the Sun (2023) is a short film-poem consisting of interconnecting “micro-essays” that collectively constitute a “fictional documentary” about the work of the sun. Inspired by (among other things) G.W. Leibniz’s theory of a pre-established harmony and his contributions to the science of optics, the film reflects on how the camera “translates” sunlight into intelligible images and how a photograph might be understood as the visual document of an embodied perspective. Based on a poetic sound composition, each story in the film touches on themes of labor, exhaustion, and utopianism. One chapter alludes to Andrei Platonov’s The Foundation Pit (1968), while another follows the story of a worker whose life is recorded in photograms, snapshots, and prints. Taken together, these “micro-essays” address the question: How to think collectively through the individual?

Year

2023

Director

Jakub Štourač, Anna Luňáková

Duration

14 min

Country

Czechia

Language

Czech, English