Above the Weather

Directed by The Bureau of Melodramatic Research

Above the Weather, the third part of the Alien Passions trilogy, takes the form of a road movie set in the atmosphere of a classical 50s Hollywood melodrama, shot against a background of industrial scenery from today’s Romania, with shabby oil pumps and derelict gas tanks. It makes reference to Douglas Sirk’s Written on the Wind (1957), taking the title literally, and hinting at the immaterial aspects of weather, and to the materiality of emotions, to the circuit linking affective and natural climates. It is a play on different temporalities, and follows how the end of humanity is recontextualized across different epochs – a 20s poem by Sara Teasdale on extinction, a 50s nuclear SF radio show, and the 80s Turkish Eurovision song Petrol.