________ (Kyle Faulkner, 2018)

A portrait of a planet. At the time I conceived of this film, I was feeling incredibly alone in the world, and wanted to create something that captured that aloneness and nothingness, that lacked all signs of artifice and human existence. I wanted to turn the frustration of being involuntarily limited to a one-man-crew into a spiritual expression, and even wanted to remove myself as the filmmaker somehow, so that it was just a window on a reality, death of the author, mortification of the ego etc. My wife always disagreed with the very conceit and claimed it was simply unattainable, but surely we can at least attempt to approximate a sense of NOTHING, as much as humanly possible. Obviously a whole film of black screen (like Cage’s 4“33) is just taking the piss, and most probably has already been done. I wanted to create what I thought of as a better world, one in which WE didn’t exist, to depict the life of the planet as it would be without PEOPLE. The film is actually called nothing, not untitled, not the word nothing, literally a blank space. Dedicated to James Benning. Music: Joep Franssens - Phasing Filmed in Australia, New Zealand, Germany, Ireland, Iceland & Japan, 2008