Description
Synopsis:
.TV is a found footage essay film: Voicemails left by an anonymous caller from the future guide us to the remote islands of Tuvalu, a place the international media has described as “the first country to disappear due to rising sea levels”. Surrounded by thousands of miles of open water, much of Tuvalu’s revenue comes from its country-code web extension .TV, a popular domain choice among global video-streaming and television industries. The caller describes how heat, digital screens, and distance gave him no choice but to leave his sinking home and escape into cyberspace where rising waters will never reach him.
About the director:
Anthony Svatek makes films that examine humans’ relationship with natural and urban environments. Having grown up at the foot of the Austrian Alps, Anthony is deeply awed by the living world, landscapes, and the way people’s awareness of nature is changing through our increasingly techno-urban experiences. Amongst other venues, his work has been shown at the New York Film Festival, International Film Festival Rotterdam, Edinburgh International Film Festival, Ann Arbor Film Festival, Big Sky Documentary Film Festival, and DOCNYC. He’s received grants and support from the New York State Council on the Arts and the Austrian Cultural Forum New York, and is a recipient of Vermont Studio Center fellowship, and the New Visions Short Golden Gate Award at the San Francisco International Film Festival. He currently serves as a board member at The Film-Makers’ Cooperative / New American Cinema Group, staffs at the Flaherty Film Seminar, produces at BBC World, and has been a devoted volunteer at the American Museum of Natural History.