0561 – Naissance des pieuvres / Water Lilies (2007)

spacetime coordinates: 2000’s middle class suburb of Paris

Water Lilies (French: Naissance des Pieuvres; meaning “birth of the octopuses”) is a 2007 French drama film and the debut as a screenwriter and director of Céline Sciamma. The film tracks the sexual awakenings of three 15-year-old female friends in a middle class suburb of Paris over the course of a single summer. Finding privacy in the solitude of the swimming pool locker room, blossoming teens Marie (Pauline Acquart), Anne (Louise Blachère) and Floriane (Adèle Haenel) come to learn the true meaning of arousal and the power of sexual attraction.

imdb

555 – ABZÛ (2016 video game)

Abzû is an adventure video game developed by Giant Squid Studios and published by 505 Games for PlayStation 4, Xbox One and Microsoft Windows.

“Immerse yourself in a vibrant ocean world full of mystery and bursting with color and life. Perform fluid acrobatics as the Diver using graceful swimming controls. Discover hundreds of unique species based on real creatures and form a powerful connection with the abundant sea life. Interact with schools of thousands of fish that procedurally respond to you, each other, and predators. Linger in epic seascapes and explore aquatic ecosystems modeled with unprecedented detail. Descend into the heart of the ocean where ancient secrets lie forgotten. But beware, dangers lurk in the depths. “ABZÛ” is from the oldest mythologies; AB, meaning water, and ZÛ, meaning to know. ABZÛ is the ocean of wisdom.”

The game’s title stems from Sumerian mythology, particularly the myth of the ocean goddess Tiamat and the fresh water god Abzu uniting to form all life: a reason this was chosen was that myths surrounding land-based life and their supposed origins in a cosmic ocean were a recurring theme in multiple world mythologies. The Middle Eastern influences extended to the game’s architecture, and incorporated Nava’s wish for structures to have meaning beyond being simple scenery or tools for player progression. (read more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abz%C3%BB#Design)

SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS (minimum) :  OS: Windows 7, 64-bit // Processor: 3.0GHz CPU Dual Core // Memory: 4 GB RAM // Graphics: Geforce GTX 750 / Radeon R7 260X // DirectX: Version 11 // Storage: 6 GB available space // Sound Card: DirectX compatible sound card

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0544 – In the Heart of the Sea (2015)

spacetime coordinates: 1850 > 1820 Massachusetts / Atlantic / Pacific Ocean / Atacames, Ecuador /  Henderson Island

In the Heart of the Sea is a 2015 adventure-drama film directed and produced by Ron Howard and written by Charles Leavitt. It is based on Nathaniel Philbrick‘s non-fiction book of the same name, about the sinking of the American whaling ship Essex in 1820, an event that inspired the novel Moby-Dick. An international co-production between the United States and Spain, the film stars Chris Hemsworth, Benjamin Walker, Cillian Murphy, Tom Holland, Ben Whishaw, and Brendan Gleeson.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1390411/

0538 – Chasing Coral (2017)

Chasing Coral is a 2017 documentary film about a team of divers, scientists and photographers around the world who document the disappearance of coral reefs.

“This is the most beautiful transformation in nature, the incredibly beautiful phase of death.”

https://www.chasingcoral.com/

http://catlinseaviewsurvey.com/

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt6333054/

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Koral (2019 video game)

A love letter to the ocean.

In Koral the player will dive into the beautiful underwater world as a sea current. Solve puzzles to bring back to life coral reefs and spread the beauty of the oceans in 15 different sea ecosystems. Flow anywhere you want to find for ways to transport healing energy for other corals and heal entire reefs and watch in realtime how the seafloor becomes colorful and vibrant with life and diversity.

Koral Is A Moving Video Game Tribute To Ocean Life (youtube)

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steam

0529 – Firewatch (2016 video game)

spacetime coordinates:  Shoshone National Forest (Wyoming wilderness) 1989

Firewatch is a first-person mystery adventure game developed by Campo Santo and published by Campo Santo and Panic. The game was released in February 2016 for Microsoft Windows, OS X, Linux, and PlayStation 4, and for Xbox One in September 2016.

The story follows a Shoshone National Forest fire lookout named Henry in 1989, following the Yellowstone fires of 1988. A month after his first day at work, strange things begin happening to both him and his supervisor Delilah, which connects to a conspired mystery that happened years ago. Henry interacts with Delilah using a walkie-talkie, with the player choosing from dialog options to communicate. His exchanges with Delilah inform the process by which their relationship is developed.

The game was directed by Olly Moss and Sean Vanaman, written by Chris Remo, Jake Rodkin, Moss and Vanaman, and produced by Gabe McGill and artist Jane Ng. The game’s environment was modelled by Ng, based on a single painting by Moss. The design draws inspiration from New Deal advertisements by the National Park Service and field research conducted in Yosemite National Park.

SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS (MINIMUM):  OS: Windows 7 or higher 64bit // Processor: Intel Core i3 2.00 GHz or AMD equivalent // Memory: 6 GB RAM // Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce 450 or higher with 1GB Memory // DirectX: Version 11 // Storage: 4 GB available space

 http://store.steampowered.com/app/383870/Firewatch/

0525 – Cold Skin (2017)

spacetime coordinates: desolate South Atlantic island the edge of the Antarctic Circle 1914, just after of Franz Ferdinand’s assassination that eventually caused World War I

Cold Skin is a 2017 French-Spanish fantasy adventure /  sci-fi horror film directed by Xavier Gens based on Albert Sánchez Piñol’s novel of the same name. The film owes a good deal to HP Lovecraft’s tales of Innsmouth folk.

“cinematographer Daniel Aranyó takes the pebble-strewn shores and grey skies of the island and fills them with uncertainty, finding in all that bleakness something that beguiles and something that chills. The waves that swirl up against the shore can be cool, clear turquoise or a deep, obscure blue-black, and either way they could be hiding something deadly just beneath the surface. Though at times we glimpse an awful tide of grey flesh like that once said to have pursued a man who stayed overnight in an Innsmouth hotel, there’s a sense that the real horror here is just out of sight – perhaps because we dare not look at it. And still, when morning comes, we can almost taste the salt air and the sweet fresh water from the fountain by the shore: the island is undeniably beautiful.”  Review by Jennie Kermode

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http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1034385/

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The Shadow Over Innsmouth – read by Mike Bennett (YouTube)

0479 – Human Flow (2017)

Human Flow is a 2017 German documentary film co-produced and directed by Ai Weiwei about the current global refugee crisis. Ai Weiwei also comes from a past of displacement; his entire family was exiled to an isolate village of Xinjiang in the Gobi desert due to his parents being writers in the midst of the Cultural Revolution in China.

Like Human Flow, Ai has created similar art installations such as the “Law of the Journey” that features a 200 foot inflatable boat carrying 258 refugee figures, “Laundromat” where he filled a New York City gallery with discarded clothing and personal notes left by refugees in a camp in Idomeni Greece, and the recreation of the captured image of Aylan Kurdi, the young Syrian who drowned off the coast of Turkey.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt6573444/

https://www.humanflow.com/