"For me, creative climate leadership is about taking responsibility for the climate emergency in my own work. I am more committed than ever to using my skills and talents to make a positive impact on our planet."
About
Firat Sezgin is a Turkish producer based in Utrecht. He is the owner of the Dutch production company Institute of Time which is an interdisciplinary film and XR production company. Focusing on creative projects around climate change, Institute of Time aims to bring a different perspective to our current life and uncertain future with storytelling. Their work has been exhibited in festivals such as Venice Film Festival IFFRotterdam IDFA Hot Docs and more.
Project Highlights
OUR ARK
OUR ARK (Writer and Director Deniz Tortum & Kathryn Hamilton) is an essay film on our efforts to create a virtual replica of the real world. We are backing up the planet, creating 3D models of animals, rainforests, cities and people. We are archiving as if ecological collapse could be staved off through some digital Noah’s Ark of beasts and objects.
Adolfo Bioy Casares’ 1940 novella “Invention of Morel”, features a device that can perfectly capture life — at a cost. Anything captured by the device is infinitely replayed as a hologram but destroyed in the real world. In another approach to simulation, Elon Musk has said: “The odds that we are in base reality is one in billions”. He refers to an idea popular amongst technologists and entrepreneurs: the simulation hypothesis, which argues that we live in an artificial simulation rather than in reality. Enthusiasm for this hypothesis may be explained by the nihilism of our current trajectory. This belief offers solace against paralysis: as we bring our world to ecological catastrophe, we terminate only one of infinite “simulations”. At its core OUR ARK explores this conflict.”
The Miracle Basket
The Miracle Basket (Writer/Director Abner Preis) glimpses into humankind’s recent past told through an intimate childhood story in which mistakes bring change and hope for the future of the planet.
It’s a textured and layered story integrating socio-political thought with abstract subjects both metaphysical and contemporary. By describing the arrival of the west as the downfall of innocence, the VR experience relates to environmental issues of today and political uprising through storytelling.
Walking Fish
Walking Fish (directed by Nathan Saucier) is a documentary film in development that is a hallucinatory journey into the world of contemporary aquaculture in the North Atlantic. The film follows the points of view of several key species – oysters, mussels, and salmon – on their seed-to-table voyages in New England and the Netherlands, depicting their spawning, rearing, harvesting, and consumption. In doing so, Walking Fish elucidates a complex and often sublime assemblage of human labour, animals, and machinery while the industry slides toward automation and the doomsday clock of climate change threatens to run out.
Project Gallery
