#   J.P. Sniadecki’s (AM ’07) upcoming film showing 

 



####  calendar\_today Date and Time 

 **September 17, 2017** 

 07:00PM - 07:00PM EDT 

####  pin\_drop Location 

 **Harvard Film Archive 24 Quincy Street Cambridge MA 02138**  



 

 



 

 **Joshua Bonnetta and J.P. Sniadecki in Person**

 [Harvard Film Archive](http://hcl.harvard.edu/hfa/films/2017sepnov/resistance.html#el)

 Sunday September 17 at 7pm

   ![el mar al mar](/sites/g/files/omnuum8766/files/styles/hwp_1_1__720x720_scale/public/rsea/files/elmaralmar.jpg?itok=iuDwE0C7) 

 

 **El mar la mar**

 Directed by Joshua Bonnetta and J.P. Sniadecki

 US 2017, DCP, color, 94 min. English and Spanish with English subtitles

 Shot over several years in the Sonoran Desert near the US/Mexico border, Joshua Bonnetta and J.P. Sniadecki’s intensely complex and transcendent *El mar la mar* weaves together oral histories of desert border stories with hand-processed, grainy 16mm images of the flora, fauna and those who trespass the mysterious terrain, riddled with items its travelers have left behind. A sonically rich soundtrack adds another, sometimes eerie, dimension; the call of birds and other nocturnal noises invisibly populate the austere landscape. Over a black screen, people speak of their intense, mythic experiences in the desert: A man tells of a fifteen-foot-tall monster said to haunt the region, while a border patrolman spins a similarly bizarre tale of man versus beast. The majority of *El mar la mar* occurs in darkness—often with only traces of light outlining the figures moving in the night—leaving exposed the sharp edges of a fatally inscribed line. Emerging from the ethos of Harvard’s Sensory Ethnography Lab, Sniadecki’s attentive documentary approach conspires supernaturally with Bonnetta’s meditations on the materiality of film. Their stunning collaboration is a mystical, folktale-like atmosphere dense with the remains of desire, memories and ghosts.



 

 



 

 

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