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The elements shape every part of our lives. They build our bodies, sustain our survival, and fill the world around us as quiet forces that move unseen, yet hold the stories of our very existence.
ELEMENTAL: Atomic Tales & Periodic Fables
ELEMENTAL: Atomic Tales & Periodic Fables is a thought-provoking series of short documentaries that explore our lives through the elements of the periodic table. Created by award-winning and emerging filmmakers from around the world, each 5 to 20 minute film offers a unique human story told in a distinct voice and style, ranging from personal to political, artistic to animated, and investigative to contemplative.
ELEMENTAL is produced by Mike Paterson and Heidi Fleisher, supported by Sandbox Films.
CESIUM (9,192,631,770 Hz)
Directed by Todd Chandler / USA / 12 mins
Watch here on Op-Docs
A filmmaker’s conversations with his young son about the different ways in which they experience time leads to a deeper reflection of what time actually is, attempts to control it, and how it shapes human experience. From the physicists who look after the atomic clocks that run the modern world, to the daily ways in which average people contend with time, to the eternal relationship between time and power, the film explores the tension between objective and subjective time: intimate, philosophical, poetic, political and scientific.
CARBON (The Broken Circle)
Directed by Zhao Liang / China / 6 mins
Watch here on Op-Docs
From the coal mines of China’s northern grasslands to the nearby desert, the film depicts the absurd reality and illusory cycle of humans creating destruction and trying to remedy it at the same time.
LEAD (BAEA)
Directed by Terra Long / British Columbia, Canada / 19 mins
Watch here on Op-Docs
In the dead of winter, at a wildlife rescue center on the Pacific Coast of so-called Canada, a team of rehabbers treat bald eagles suffering from lead poisoning so that they can be released back to their environment. The film gently follows a difficult season and the perennial tension at the core of the rehabbers code of ethics: how to care for wild animals in a human environment while maintaining the dignity and wildness of the animal. At what point does the harm of treatment exceed the potential benefits of care?
IRON (A Robust Heart)
Directed by Martín Benchimol / Argentina / 11 mins
Watch here on Op-Docs
Slaughterhouse workers with blood still wet on their clothes, their skin glowing with sweat, speak with sensitivity, or about the impossibility of sensitivity. The camera is their psychoanalyst’s couch in this film that starts out as a playful portrait series and becomes an exploration of what it means to be a father.
SODIUM (No Mean City)
Directed by Ross McClean / Northern Ireland / 15 mins
Two workmen and an apprentice navigate Belfast at night, replacing old sodium street lights with LED. Beneath their glow, the city grapples with change, as progress marches on.
ZINC (Memento Mori)
Directed by Ainara Vera / Spain/Italy / 9 mins
As rhythmic machines press zinc sheets into coffins, factory workers reflect on their own mortality. Memento Mori turns the hum of a coffin factory into a lyrical call to embrace life before it slips away.
CHLORINE (Public Pool)
Directed by Elizabeth Lo / USA / 13 mins
In the United States, swimming pools have long been contested sites of privilege, class, and race – serving as both paradisiacal symbols of wealth and American excess and as reprieves from the ever-increasing heat for the urban poor. This simple, observational portrait of one of the few remaining public swimming pools in the heart of Los Angeles becomes a visual celebration of public spaces as well as a meditation on family and the luxury of leisure.
HELIUM (Victoria)
Directed by Sam Soko / Kenya / 12 mins
Victoria is on a new journey in life. She set up a helium balloon business in Nairobi as a means of surrounding herself with joy, as well as finding security after escaping an abusive relationship. Five years later, she is redefining her existence as a daughter, a mother and a woman.
