350 MYA

2016 | 5 Min | 16mm

“350 million years ago the Tafilalt region was the Rheic Ocean.” So we are informed at the end of Terra Long’s lovely formalist landscape study, which employs the sharp contrast of colored silk against sand and sky to emulate a kind of visual oasis. The material, undulating in the wind, is not a metaphor for the once-present waves. Rather, it demonstrates a time-frame separate from that of the desert itself, which is always in motion but whose geological existence is at a significant remove from human time.

Adding an additional dimension to these images of differential flux, Long displays the work of the apparatus itself: slippage in frame registration, sprockets vibrating, and the specific meeting of the Moroccan sun and the surface of the lens. Each reflects a topography, and in turn a temporality all its own.

— Michael Sicinski, Mubi Notebook

Made during the Weight of Mountains film residency at Café Tissardmine in Morocco

Selected Screenings

Toronto International Film Festival, Wavelengths, Canada
International Film Festival Rotterdam, Netherlands
Jihlava Film Festival, Czech Republic
Media City Film Festival, Windsor, Detroit, Canada, US
LA Film Forum: Mysteries Inside Facts curated by David Dinnell US
Lightfield, Sanfrancisco, US
Festival Strangloscope, Florianópolis, Brazil
Exposure Kopernik Observatory, curated by Tomonari Nishikawa NY, US