We are backing up the planet, creating 3D models of animals, rainforests, cities, and people. We are archiving as if ecological collapse could be staved off through some digital Noah’s Ark of beasts and objects. Our Ark is an essay film on our efforts to create a virtual replica of the real world.
Selected Festivals and Awards:
- Boston Turkish Festival's 17th Annual Documentary & Short Film Competition (2022): Special Mention
- Istanbul Film Festival, Turkey (2022): Best Short Film
- Imagine Science Film Festival, USA (2021): World Premiere
- IDFA International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam, The Netherlands (2021)
- BAMPFA Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archives, USA (2022)
- Museum of the Moving Image, USA (2022)
- True/False Film Festival, USA (2022)
- Environmental Film Festival in the Nation's Capital, USA (2022)
- Glasgow Short Film Festival, Scotland (2022)
- Vilnius Film Festival Kino pavasaris, Lithuania (2022)
Directors DENIZ TORTUM and KATHRYN HAMILTON
DENİZ TORTUM
Deniz Tortum’s films have been screened at many film festivals including Venice Film Festival, Rotterdam, SxSW, Sheffield, True/False and Dokufest.
He worked at the MIT Open Documentary Lab focusing on VR research.
He curated and produced the new media sections of !f Istanbul and Camden Film Festival.
Among his work are the first Turkish film screened at SxSW, ZAYIAT (2013); VR project created with Çağrı Hakan Zaman and Nil Tuzcu, that told the story of Istanbul Pogrom, a government-initiated organized attack on the minorities of Istanbul on September 6-7, 1955, called September 1955 (2016); the documentary If Only There Were Peace (2017), co-directed with Carmine Grimaldi; FLOODPLAIN (2018) which was inspired by the world portrayed in Emre Yeksan’s Yuva; the roadtrip/music documentary Anatolian Trip (2018) co-directed with Can Eskinazi; and PHASES OF MATTER (2020) which made its world premiere in January at the Rotterdam Film Festival.
Deniz Tortum’s documentary Phases of Matter was screened at the 20th Boston Turkish Film Festival in 2021.
KATHRYN HAMILTON
Kathryn Hamilton is a theater director based in New York and Istanbul.
She is the founder of Sister Sylvester, a performance group. Recent productions include Three Rooms, a live-skype documentary which premiered at Shubbak Festival in London, and has toured Europe and US, and which critiques technologies promising ‘presence’ and ‘mobility’ in the context of the crisis over refugees; The Fall a performance essay at The Public Theater for Under The Radar, currently touring US universities; Other work has been performed at The Park Avenue Armory, NYC; Bozar, Brussels; Arcola, London.
Her work has been reviewed by New York Times, New Yorker, Time Out, Village Voice, American Theater Magazine, Performance Art Journal.
She has written about VR ethics for New Inquiry, recently re-published in their ‘Classics’ issue.
She holds a B.A from Cambridge University, and an M.F.A from Columbia University, and is a 2019 Yale University Poynter Fellow.
