Geoblocking the Sun: Solar Eclipses in Transnational Artists’ Film

What is it about?

The basis for works by such filmmakers as James Benning and Kevin Jerome Everson, the “Great American Eclipse” of August 2017 demonstrated the desire of artists cinema to capture the unique phenomenon of totality, when the moon completely obscures the sun for a period of several minutes. Beyond the borders of the United States, the transnational efforts of Lukas Marxt’s Double Dawn (2014) in Australia and J.P. Sniadecki’s The Yellow Bank (2010) in China also render the solar eclipse as a phenomenon of great cultural and ecological scope. While the astronomical event in each of these films itself provides a singular and contingent spectacle for the camera, this article argues that the eclipse’s mythical conjugation of the elemental forces of fire and earth also resonates unexpectedly with the diverse environments that fall under the moon’s shadow.

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