DARKNESS MATTERS
Audio-Visual Installation / Fulldome speculative documentary
by Costanza Julia Bani
CROSSCUTS Environmental Humanities Festival November 2024
Scenkonst Museet (Museum of Performing Arts) December 2024
Reactor Hall (Stockholm Design Week) February 2025
m:brane forum Malmö March 2025
WIRE - Artistic Research Exhibition in Sofia Bulgaria, June 2025
more dates to be announced
Darkness Matters is a sensory immersive and meditative audio-visual experience. The project exists in two variations, one for domes, which is still in production and one as a multiscreen installation, that can be shown also as single channel.
It takes the audience from cultural to natural landscapes. It starts in the olive groves by night slowly illuminated by fireflies and proceeds with an ideal movement from one altitudinal zonation to another. It ascends to the montane zone, showing forests by night and goes up to the alpine zone, discovering meadows beneath mountains profiles, above which the Milky way makes its arc and makes us wonder.
The film want to contribute to raise awareness around the effects of light pollution and debunk the culturally induced fear of darkness.
The dome version with contain elements of multi-species storytelling, as we will include the animal's perspective (fireflies, dung-beetles and ibex) thanks to a novel camera, making it possible to capture their vision. We will as well make use of a generative software, that will make it possible to watch a different film each time the audience enters the dome - as the narrative will be fed with data about light pollution, which will make it possible to observe a more or less polluted nocturnal environment, depending on how much light pollution we will accept.
Dedicated to my son Elias Theodor Bani Lindström
Credits:
Filmmaker Costanza Julia Bani
Producer Lars G Lindström and Costanza Julia Bani
Associate Producer Roberto Bresin / NAVET
Editor: Luca Cappelli
Directors of photography by altitude
Foothills and montane zone: Francesco Andreotti
Olive groves with fireflies: Radim Schreiber
Alpine zone and Milky Way: Alex D'Emilia
Sound recording and design: Nicola Gualandris and Naomi Galbiati
VFX Nils Friden / Velourfilm
With the support of
Fellonica Film
Stockholm University of the Arts research funds
Small Visionary Projects
NAVET (KTH Royal Institute of Technology)
Swedish Art Grants Committee
Official and warm thanks to Irene Borgna, Federico Pellegrino and Fabio Falchi, who made me discover complete new aspects of darkness
LINK TO TRAILER:
https://vimeo.com/1048293351/6565b70b09?share=copy
MEASURING A NATION
Feature documentary and XR project
by Costanza Julia Bani and Cristina Picchi
Where does a country begin and where does it end? Measuring a Nation will be a film about moving glaciers, watersheds, fluid borders, natural boundaries, fragile perimeters, and the consequences and meaning of these shifts. It will be a creative observational documentary about natural borders— apparently unquestionable and self-evident - and the creation of political borders; about climate change and the glaciers’ disappearing eco-systems; it will be about the people who has been frequenting a space and occurs to have both a sense of belonging and loss: the highlanders of the Alps, told through a very special lodge on the Cervino / Matterhorn. It will be a film about the owners and their business and the demands of society and nature. Ultimately it will be an immersive experience from inside a glacier, how it feels to melt and to be able to naturally live without a frontier
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IT'S ALWAYS THE SUN
Feature Documentary In Development
by Costanza Julia Bani and Nikola Lorenzin
It’s always the sun is a personal portrait of the sun, our "unruly" star, its power and vulnerability, my, our and human’s relation to it, our need for it to survive and romanticize, its fundamental part in our system and place in the universe. Within a lyrical and philosophical framework scientists will tell us about the relevance of shuttles sent out into space to study the sun; about solar-geoengineering experiments currently done and foreseen for the future to bounce sun rays back in the stratosphere to cool down the planer's temperatures; and the bet on nuclear fusion and the construction of power plants of the future to create clean energy, imitating the sun. Fragile creatures, including us as human-beings, experience life and death, joy and despair in the face of its power, as well as the ungraspable fact that also the sun will die once its last cycle of helium and hydrogen will have taken place, and so the solar system we are part of
ALL WHAT FLICKERS AND GLOWS
Full Dome Project In Production
by Costanza Julia Bani
Full dome theatre project. In the mysterious abyss of the ocean, bioluminescent creatures cast an enchanting glow, painting the depths with an otherworldly radiance. This aquatic light show finds its terrestrial counterpart in the gentle flicker of fireflies, whose ethereal dance mirrors the galactic choreography of the Milky Way. From the ocean's depths to the heavens above, a symphony of bioluminescence and celestial brilliance unfolds, connecting the microcosm of abyssal fishes, octopuses, jellyfishes and anemones to land-dwelling fireflies to the macrocosm of the galaxy in a harmonious display of natural wonders
THE SPECTACLE
short film in distribution / feature film in development
by Yasmin van Dorp and The Small Worlds Collective
The Spectacle is a short documentary that sheds light on the evolving nature of travel behavior in today’s digital age. Filmed in various locations across South Norway, Lapland, and Türkiye, the film unravels the transformation of serene landscapes into bustling tourist attractions.
Winner Full Frame President’s Award 2025 Full Frame President’s Award at the 27th Full Frame Documentary Festival in Durham, North Carolina. Presented by Duke University, the President’s Award honors the Best Student Film, recognizing outstanding work by up-and-coming filmmakers
STORIES FROM THE TEA HOUSE
3D / VR and 2D short documentary in production
by Adele Cheraghi
Stories from the teahouse tells the story of Theomak, a 65 years old survivor of 30 years long imprisonment in Iran and Iraq. As a witness of Iran's political massacres, he was sitting in the Stockholm International Court, shedding light on the Islamists atrocities after the 1979 revolution. Join his journey of resilience as an amateur illustrator redrawing and retelling his life in his own words through animated tableaux vivant, in this 15-minute reconstructed documentary. Like performes used to do in teahouses when Iran was still a free country.
