Aureole

Directed by Frances Scott

In meteorology, the aureole is an atmospheric, optical phenomenon; the visible inner disc of a corona, produced by the diffraction of light from the sun or the moon, bright starlight or planet-light. ‘Aureole’ brings together unused celestial images from Scott’s earlier film, ‘Diviner’ (2017), with vocoder-readings from Ursula K. Le Guin’s novel ‘The Left Hand of Darkness’ (1969), scored by Chu-Li Shewring’s remix of the House track ‘Brighter Days’ (1992) by Cajmere featuring Dajae. ‘Aureole’ is a transition between a lost chapter from ‘Diviner’ and ‘Wendy’ (2022, forthcoming), a film fan-letter to composer Wendy Carlos, whose many interests include solar eclipse photography. Accelerating to a euphoric end, the film is the duration of the longest total solar eclipse, when the moon completely covers the sun.