Distant Early Warning

Anna Chiaretta Lavatelli / United States / 2025 / European Premiere / 9 min.

synopsis

The Distant Early Warning Line (DEWLine), an extensive chain of radar stations built by the US and Canada during the Cold War, was intended to detect a possible nuclear attack from the Soviet Union. The video is based on digitized 8 mm films from 1956, which capture the movement of massive military equipment into the pristine Arctic landscape of the Aleutian Islands and the everyday life of workers operating in Inuit areas. Algorithmic interventions in the rewritten images create phantoms of the landscape, people, and military installations. Traces of temporary human presence are gradually overlaid with abstract layers of technological vision.

“Lavatelli transforms the 8 mm footage to shift between human perspectives and the inscrutable point of view of technology, presenting an apocalyptic vision as though the worst has already happened. The abstracted, melting, flickering textures evoke radioactive poisoning and atomic destruction. Human figures emerge and vanish, consumed by forces far beyond human control.” — from the accompanying material to the film

biography

Anna Chiaretta Lavatelli is an American artist, filmmaker, and professor of media arts at Antioch College. In her work, she uses video, installation, sound, and performance, both independently and in collaborative projects. She has a long-standing interest in private archives and home movies, in which she searches for fragments that intertwine with ideas about the end of time.