Output details

Buried Land

Conceived and co-directed with Geoffrey Alan Rhodes, the research for and realisation of this feature film was supported by £16,427 funding from the AHRC Research Grants-Practice Led and Applied scheme (2008) and $20,000 from the Princess Grace Foundation (2007).

Buried Land (HDCam, 86 mins) is a hybrid of fiction and documentary based in Visoko - a town in Bosnia which lies in a valley of ancient pyramids pre-dating Egypt. The film explores how its residents are energized by having a new cultural identity to promote not linked to the recent memories of war. Consequently, a tourist industry begins to bloom with the news of the pyramids' still-unconfirmed existence. Mirroring its own vacillation between fact and fiction, Buried Land depicts a town full of people caught between the real and the imagined. Buried Land uses neo-realistic techniques (an improvised storyline, the use of non-actors, the deployment of free-indirect discourse blurring the distinction between the subjectivity and objectivity of the camera viewpoint) to articulate the complexities of this event. Reacting to Gilles Deleuze’s concept of ‘a minor cinema’ and utilising ‘the powers of the false’, the film uses self-referential devices to foreground how documentary and fiction film are not so dissimilar. It comments on how misrepresentations can occur when a pre-existing narrative or schema is mapped onto a people. Consequently, the film’s methodology explores the social space of filmmaking (an area Deleuze’s philosophy overlooks) as a site for performing difference.

This co-UK/USA/Bosnia production premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival, New York (22 April 2010), and was officially selected for festivals in Moscow, Sarajevo, Mumbai, Gothenburg International and East End Film Festivals. http://www.cinemaintothereal.com/steveneastwood/Buried_Land.html

and http://www.buriedland.com/

Both directors were interviewed on NBC's ‘Nightly News’ programme (see: http://www.buriedland.com). Sight & Sound named Buried Land as one of the highlights of 2010 (http://old.bfi.org.uk/sightandsound/polls/films-of-2010-full.php)