Director: Ed Sayers

Assembled from footage from across the globe, Ed Sayers’ documentary is a series of beautiful visions and meditations on the environment. A long-time enthusiast for the home movie Super 8 medium, Sayers was inspired to dig his old camera out when he came across a French filmmaker’s footage of flamingos in flight. He initiated the filmmaking competition ‘Straight 8’ in 1999 and put a request out for other filmmakers to contribute. Drawing on work from forty Super 8 filmmakers across twenty-five countries, the resulting collection includes visions of nature from land, sea and air; vast open spaces and built-up environs, including Kangaroos in Australia, whales in Argentina and monkeys in urban India. The narration can be a little on the nose, and feel surplus to requirements, but the various renderings, captured in vividly coloured, grainy Super 8, are beautiful with the medium somehow underlining the transience and fragility of the ecology.

David Willoughby

Follow David on Bluesky @davidwilloughby.bsky.social