Description:

With Their Backs to the Sky is a feature documentary in progress that immerses viewers in the tightly entangled lives of Malagasy field biologists, local bat catchers, and fruit bats in Madagascar. Bringing together sensory ethnography and slow cinema, this collaboratively produced documentary uses oral storytelling to pass through the permeable membrane between reality and fantasy in a post-colonial context. 

Erik Nuding is a non-fiction filmmaker who creates ecologically minded work through long term cross-cultural collaborations, bringing together slow cinema and sensory ethnography as a means to explore multispecies relations. His films have screened at Visions Du Reel, Docs Ireland and Fid Marseille among others. Previous work has been funded by Sundance, Sandbox films and the Buffett Institute for Climate Crisis and Media. Erik holds an MFA in Documentary Media from Northwestern University and a BA from the University of California, Berkeley.

Questions? Please email Risa Puleo at rpuleo@u.northwestern.edu.

Presented by the Art, Community and Environment Research Workshop of the Kaplan Humanities Institute.