Sundog left society behind for a solitary life in the desert near Mexico, where he patrols the range with a rifle, hunts wild game, listens to Latino pop songs and catches toads to extract a psychoactive substance from their glands. The camera follows the taciturn hermit on his rounds, close enough to touch, paradoxically feeding the enigma of his reclusive existence more than it provides any explanations. A film like a thick scab, an encapsulated injury, which neither romantically glorifies nor unnecessarily dramatizes the raw beauty of nature and the practice of observing silence within it. An idiosyncratic testament to the ensoulment of all that surrounds us. The possibility of a renewed absence of the human species has rarely been conveyed in such an impressive fashion – via the focussed observation of one of its representatives.

J.P. Sniadecki is an anthropologist-filmmaker. In collaboration with Zhu Rikun, he runs a 16-mm film workshop in Songzhuang, Beijing/China. He is a 2017 Guggenheim Fellowship recipient, and the Director of the MFA program in Documentary Media at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois/USA.

Filmography (selection): 2012 PEOPLE’S PARK, 2013 YUMEN, 2014 THE IRON MINISTRY, 2017 EL MAR LA MAR, 2021 A SHAPE OF THINGS TO COME

Lisa Marie Malloy is an artist committed to devotional and engaged modes of filmmaking. A SHAPE OF THINGS TO COME is her first feature-length film. She is engaged in creating community centers dedicated to the re-claiming of “third landscapes” within suburban spaces as potential sources of sustainable food security, responsible resource use, and community-building.

Filmography: 2021 A SHAPE OF THINGS TO COME