speakingland by annemarie cilon

The Film "Clouds Clouds (...) We Knew Nothing" is made in Amsterdam in The Netherlands in 2011. In the Film you see the image of an Urban Landscape. The camera work is taken in one shot from a static position, the moving parts of the film are the clouds, the smoke, the birds and the moving trees in the wind. The smoke clouds are from of the coal-fired power station in Amsterdam (The Hemweg Centrale). The Hemwegcentrale is closed since the end of december in 2019. The narration in the film is from the novel "The Life and Strange Surprsing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe" by Daniel Defoe, written in 1719. The text is an excerpt from page 47: (..) We knew nothing where we were, or what country were we driven to, be it an island or the main road, inhabited or uninhabited (..) The film is made from a visionary view of the landscape that has changed over time. And not knowing where we have ended up in this world. Clouds are formed by smoke, we can no longer tell the difference. The film touches on subjects such as 'the makeable world, time, change, industrialization, the ignorance of humans and the preservation of nature.