http://www.metromagazine.com.au | © ATOM | Metro Magazine 195• 75At the beginning of3GD "G@KKDMFD(2016), Yuri Ancarani’s
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stands a towering black rectangle, looming in the mid
dle of the frame, in the middle of the desert. It’s a visual
evocation of the monolith from 2O@BD .CXRRDX
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on the back foot. What is this shape? Is it real or a visual
effect? What is its purpose, narratively speaking? And
what’s it doing in what’s supposed to be a documentary?
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that the people you see are actors,’ Ancarani has said,
playfully.^1 The men we see on screen, ridiculously wealthy
Arab sheikhs with lives of unimaginable luxury and leisure,
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least, they’re all interchangeable. The grand vistas of the
desert make for such a beautiful background that they
could’ve been employed just for visual resonance. And
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empty expanse to make the alien landscape seem even
more alien.
But it’s all real. This towering obelisk, though unex
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it’s one of a quartet of steel plates standing in the sands
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may look like footage brought back from the surface of
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limestone outcrops, the lifeless sands and the rustling
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make out telephone poles.
And the characters herein – the guy who drives a
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could’ve been wrangled to tell a director’s story. The col
lective noun for falcons? A cast.
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