Art Encounters at Volvo Studio: David Monacchi

An exploration through remote primary equatorial forests, the project “Fragments of Extinction” uses sound as a medium to reflect on the current global extinction crisis. The film portrays the fieldwork of eco-acoustics researcher and project’s founder David Monacchi, who is on a quest to record 24-hour 3-dimensional sonic portraits in the area with the assessed highest biodiversity on Earth. Through beautiful and immersive cinematography and directing, Alessandro D’emilia and Nika Saravanja follow the progress of this urgent project, incorporating Monacchi’s lecture footage, which manages to accessibly impart the complexity of the issues at hand. During the film the focus shifts from incredible images to a spectacular surround listening experience. It’s as if the viewers themselves are in the middle of the rainforest – they hear insects, birds, amphibians, mammals and even trees in a three-dimensional polyphony of nature. The result is a careful balance between Monacchi’s scientific yet deeply philosophical relationship with the environment and the urgent plight of communities and creatures that are facing the impact of habitat loss, invasive industry and climate change.

“Dusk Chorus” (2017 – already awarded in 11 international film festivals all over the world) is an enduring contemplation and poetic journey on some of the often-overlooked aspects that make an ecosystem diverse, unique, and fragile.