Somnium

Rosa Barba produced a science fiction film based on interviews with local residents and individuals involved in the land suppletion project for Maasvlakte 2. Barba asked the interviewees to imagine what this new land could look like in the future. While we see images of the new land, the slufter: a storage reservoir for heavily contaminated sludge from the new Meuse river, the construction of the huge docksides, basalt blocks, empty containers and the mechanical movements of the transhipment process, we listen to a story apparently taking place in the future. The main character is a beekeeper who started with his first hive on the Maasvlakte, 30 years ago, and is now surrounded by silos for oil storage. Combined with archive pictures of the port, the images form a mechanical ballet of man and machine, set against a futuristic landscape.

-- SKOR | Foundation for Art and Public Domain