Silika - Movies | Art-kino Croatia

Part science ction, part essay, Silica explores territorial constructs and the boundaries of the real and the me- diated in an opal mining town in the South Australian desert. Charting the journey of a lm location scout in search of otherworldly landscapes, Silica investigates notions of settlement and belonging through its exploration of a town in the midst of abandonment. With the opal resources increasingly depleted by the mining work – and fake replica gems, indistinguishable from the real thing, easily created in laboratories in Europe – people are deserting the town, leaving a eeting trace on ancient landscapes that are also marked by the presence of indig- enous Australians who walked the deserts for thousands of years. Combining microscopic photography of opals with computer-generated landscapes and objects, Silica blurs notions of the actual and the imaginary to probe ideas of ‘value’, which support not only the gem trade but wider questions of identity, mythology and cosmology. is blurring of the actual and imaginary is further embodied in the former sets of science- ction lms that are dotted around the town’s lunar landscape.