Signatures of Earth

Directed by Robert Nugent

Signatures of Earth is an experiment in repositioning documentary narrative hierarchies in the space age. The film aggregates fragmentary encounters from varying points of view, encountering cuttlefish and quasars, and much else in between, happened upon during a transcontinental journey to film the shadow of the moon. Challenging, in the tradition of Brechtian distanciation, the film is also poetic, ethereal, roving, contemplative, richly cinematic and empathetically engaged. Signatures of Earth presents a fractured vision of the cognitive and sensory muddle that is an antipodean road trip through the Anthropocene. It all makes sense as long as you don’t want it too.