Sunspot

Directed by David Blandy

Sunspot (2023) shows two lives and two observatories, one in Los Angeles, one in Tokyo. Using archival imagery, the film tells the tale of two sunspot observers both making drawings of the same sun on the day the Hiroshima bomb killed 100,000 people on August 6th, 1945. The film reflects on the forms and uses of light, from the light reflecting in a mirror to look at the sun and into space, the white hollow light of the bomb, and the light shone through the old film footage to create the image we see now. The huge wildfire that threatened Los Angeles’ Mount Wilson Observatory becomes a mirror of the huge clouds and destruction from the atomic bomb.