With a pronounced use of negative film, the Czech audiovisual and performance based artist Nika Pećarina, born in 1992, takes the audience on an ontological exploration of the earth's soil and all that emerged from it. Merging his love for pottery and ceramics with a poetic reflection on the transformation of matter, Pećarina traces the relation of landscapes, objects and the senses in an experimental audiovisual poem.

“Ether, earth, allure- something where once there was nothing … a scene, filmic, agonizing, delectable- affecting the other in ways that mirror the means of their making“. To the Earthen Red poses itself as an eidolon, a love letter, to the indomitable nature of a system that gradually changes each of its parts. While the narrative around clay extraction forms the point of departure, Pećarina takes his time to unveil the ever changing nature of all matter. With a keen eye for composition and a meditative approach exposing the inherent stillness found in moving images, this essay film dares to place itself between the transcending qualities of image and thought, “not entirely a thing-in-itself but something of an object unfolding in space and time – a whimsical negative, a film frame – still in motion”.

To the Earthen Red is part of the New Perspectives block, which spotlights emerging filmmakers who are expanding the possibilities of the essay film form.