HD color sound 6:25

Sunspots is a film that emerges from my conversations with people who live in bunkers throughout the American Midwest. The film is an expansion of themes in my documentary Bunker (2021). Many of the bunker-dwellers stay underground for fear of sunspots and solar flares or other extra-terestrial forces that they see as active threats.

Sunspots is a hand drawn animation. The film combines hand-drawn images of sunspots recorded in the 17th century by rival scientists Christoph Scheiner and Galileo Galilei. The film brings in bright and evocative images of ground-dwelling creatures. The story of the film follows Aesop's fable of the Ant and the Grasshopper. Photographic images of solar projections allude to contemporary concerns about climate change.

This film was created in January 2021 during a residency at BoxoPROJECTS in Joshua Tree, California and was made with support of BoxoPROJECTS and Sky's the Limit observatory in 29 Palms.

music: Caroline Shaw, 'Limestone and Felt,' from the album "Orange," 2019

Performed by the Attacca Quartet