Ed Sayers, a long-time fan of the textured images made using Super 8, founded a contest for the lovely format in 1999. Mostly, the entries were enjoyable doodles, but once Sayers happened across an enchanting French entry from Roger Batteault depicting flamingos, it gave him an idea, one that has crystallised into this gorgeous, fascinating debut feature.
Super Nature, which was executive produced by Asif Kapadia, is a nature documentary made against the grain of a genre now characterised by drone shots and crisp digital precision. Instead of pursuing the immaculate, high-definition imagery familiar from National Geographic, Sayers curates his film entirely from vintage Super 8 footage, creating an episodic, arresting portrait of the natural world.
Super Nature opens with his own images of basking seals in Norfolk, and brings together more than 40 contributors across 25 countries, including filmmakers, conservationists, climate scientists and activists. Each was given two Super 8 cameras and asked to record the environment around them with a B-roll of the participant in action. The resulting two- to three-minute sequences voyage around the world: whales in Argentina, reindeer in the Arctic Circle, mountain goats in the Alps and seals in Norfolk. The animals are not always cute: one of the strongest sections features a woman in the Mojave Desert who insists that snakes saved her life.
Wildlife thrives in unexpected urban settings, including such megacities as Delhi and Bangkok. During Sayers’s introduction to the collection, he makes meaningful notes on the medium. The analogue format, which demands careful proximity to the subject, gives the film its defining character. Grain, varied exposure, and occasional flares graft the images a glorious immediacy, like we’re watching holiday footage with seadragons.
As the great Cornish film-maker Mark Jenkin has observed, the limitations of film require a leap of faith. The three-minute length of Super 8 cartridges imposes a discipline on filming, requiring contributors to choose their moments rather than record with abandon. Sayers’s careful editing and Alexandra Hamilton-Ayres’s score give the disparate material coherence. The effect is curative, but there is urgency among contributors protecting endangered species such as northern white rhinos in Kenya and turtles in Saint Vincent and the Grenadines.
In cinemas September 4th