Surface Levels by Hannah Brasier

Surface Levels is a five-minute experimental nonfiction smartphone film shot in Kinchega National Park and the surrounding Menindee Lakes, in south-west New South Wales, in so-called Australia. The well-known narrative of this environment is drought and flood, culminating in ongoing mass fish deaths due to extended periods of hot weather, sudden temperature drops, lack of water, and over-allocations of water – all of which can be read as climate change (Murray Darling Basin Authority 2023). Anthropologist Anna Tsing considers telling stories of “promise and ruin” which end in decay as abandoning hope; to maintain hope she calls for attention to be drawn to the entanglements of “what’s left” in these “damaged landscape[s]” (italics in original 2015, 18). In making Surface Levels the intention was not to tell the story of how conditions of climate change lead to fish deaths in the region, rather to follow a process of collecting fragments of this environment left out from these narratives – can attending to what remains elicit hope in a time of climate crisis?

The shots included in Surface Levels were filmed through a process of wandering or driving, noticing, and filming with an old iPhone SE, an attachable Zoom microphone, and a small tripod. I sat in the passenger seat of a four-wheeled-drive, wandered and took note of what my attention was drawn to, which would then evolve into lists of unnoticed qualities to be filmed. Textures of tree bark, reflections of trees rippling on water, native flowers, black cockatoos in treetops, indications of First Nations sites through formations of shells and rocks, and the disturbances of metal and brick in an otherwise bird and dust filled environment, became the lists of footage captured along the Kinchega Homestead billabong walk. Fish skeletons, water lapping, tufts of grass, bird calls and discarded rotting carp evolved as a list along the sandy bank of Menindee Lake. Endless, occasionally corrugated straight roads, marked by suicidal lizards, cattle grids, vast skies, dry grasslands and unexpectedly, goats describes the list of footage captured in the road-trip to and around Kinchega. Listing in its ability to avoid narrative coherence provided a suitable device to collect as many left out patterns of the environment, and is therefore reflected in the form of Surface Levels.

Surface Levels by Hannah Brasier

Surface Levels is a five-minute experimental nonfiction smartphone film shot in Kinchega National Park and the surrounding Menindee Lakes, in south-west New South Wales, in so-called Australia. The well-known narrative of this environment is drought and flood, culminating in ongoing mass fish deaths due to extended periods of hot weather, sudden temperature drops, lack of water, and over-allocations of water – all of which can be read as climate change (Murray Darling Basin Authority 2023). Anthropologist Anna Tsing considers telling stories of “promise and ruin” which end in decay as abandoning hope; to maintain hope she calls for attention to be drawn to the entanglements of “what’s left” in these “damaged landscape[s]” (italics in original 2015, 18). In making Surface Levels the intention was not to tell the story of how conditions of climate change lead to fish deaths in the region, rather to follow a process of collecting fragments of this environment left out from these narratives – can attending to what remains elicit hope in a time of climate crisis?

The shots included in Surface Levels were filmed through a process of wandering or driving, noticing, and filming with an old iPhone SE, an attachable Zoom microphone, and a small tripod. I sit in the passenger seat of a four-wheel-drive, wander and take note of what my attention was drawn to, which would then evolve into lists of unnoticed qualities to be filmed. Textures of tree bark, reflections of trees rippling on water, native flowers, black cockatoos in treetops, indications of indigenous sites through formations of shells and rocks, and the disturbances of metal and brick in an otherwise bird and dust filled environment, became the lists of footage captured along the Kinchega Homestead billabong walk. Fish skeletons, water lapping, tufts of grass, bird calls and discarded rotting carp evolved as a list along the sandy bank of Menindee Lake. Endless, occasionally corrugated straight roads, marked by suicidal lizards, cattle grids, vast skies, dry grasslands and unexpectedly, goats describes the list of footage captured in the road-trip to and around Kinchega. Listing in its ability to avoid narrative coherence provided a suitable device to collect as many left out patterns of the environment, and is therefore reflected in the form of Surface Levels.

Filmmakers

Filmmakers

Hannah Brasier

Dr Hannah Brasier is a teacher, researcher and media practitioner interested in how noticing can be used to engage with the world ecologically. Her films combine the everyday, travel, landscape and environment to create ecologically conscious media. Hannah teaches conceptual studios and Cinema Studies in the School of Media & Communication at RMIT, and has multiple articles published in the Studies in Documentary Film journal.