Rock Bottom Riser – Michelle Carey

During the pandemic, I have become preoccupied with the idea of the cosmic. The last 18 months have shown how quickly atoms and molecules can travel, revealed the interconnectedness of people and countries, even when separated by large bodies of water. And, having become over-familiar with my own little patch of earth, I have been looking up at the night sky more than ever.

Fern Silva has been making cosmic films, 15 of them over a period of 15 years, which have explored ethnographic, anti-colonialist and personal issues across Haiti, Brazil, Turkey, India, various parts of the USA, and Portugal, the land of his ancestral roots. With his debut feature, Rock Bottom Riser, Silva dives deep – sometimes literally – into the living ancestral traditions of Hawaii and the encroachment of capitalist, colonial and scientific enterprises in this most beautiful and cinematically under-depicted North American island-state.

This documentary-based film threads together so many themes without being didactic; instead, it is an allusive exploration into the stars, the sky and the sea. The majestic things of earth: hypnotic molten lava, birds, otherworldly flowers, constellations, celluloid, smoke-rings, Mauna Kea. The sound and music are an integral part of this cosmos, never subjugated to the image. To be screened loud and large, this is cosmic cinema nonpareil.

Written by Michelle Carey