Francisco Rodriguez, A Moon Made of Iron (Una luna de hierro) (2017)
This film is part of the exhibition Shoreline Movements, a program of non-fiction films curated by Erika Balsom and Grégory Castéra (Council), in a space designed by Daniel Steegmann Mangrané, for the Taipei Biennial 2020.
A Moon Made of Iron opens with the poetry of Xu Lizhi, a worker at the Foxconn electronics factory in Shenzhen, China, who committed suicide in 2014 at the age of 24. It then cuts across the globe to the waters of Patagonia. The sea appears placid, but it is in fact a sea of desperation, horrendous working conditions, and bodies overboard in liquid graves. Moving between the local and the global, the shore and the deep, Francisco Rodriguez inhabits the rippling wake of dead Chinese workers who attempted to flee their squid-fishing boat off the Chilean coast, far from the first for whom a long maritime voyage was one of no return. In Una luna de hierro, the distant is near and the near, distant. 1 2
Francisco Rodriguez
A Moon Made of Iron (Una luna de hierro)
Film, 29:00
2017
WRITER/DIRECTOR
Francisco Rodriguez
CREW CAST
Carmen Godoi
Onoria Jimenez
Winston Alarcón
Samuel Barrientos
Fernando Ramirez
Julián Ramirez
Sang Won Yoon
Curtis Putralk
CINEMATOGRAPHER
Andrés Jordán
CAMERA ASSISTANT
María José Burgos
SOUND
Andrés Zelada
SOUND EDITING
Marion Papinot
SOUND MIX
Romain Ozanne
LINE PRODUCER
Sebastián Sánchez Barrientos
María José Ventura
EXECUTIVE PRODUCER
Bertrand Scalabre
PRODUCTION
Le Fresnoy – Studio National
DISTRIBUTION COMPANY
Le Fresnoy – Studio national
Natalia Trebik
Top image : Film still, image courtesy of the artist and Le Fresnoy.
SHORELINE MOVEMENTS
Movement 1
Black Beach / Forces / The Dead / Camp
— Beatriz Santiago Munoz
The Shiranui Sea (Shiranuikai)
— Tsuchimoto Noriaki
Lagos Island
— Karimah Ashadu
Movement 2
Becoming Alluvium
— Thao Nguyen Phan
malni – towards the ocean, towards the shore/a>
— Sky Hopinka
At Land
— Maya Deren
Movement 3
Dead Sea Drawings (Part 1)
— Edith Dekyndt
The Two Sights
— Joshua Bonnetta
blue mantle
— Rebecca Meyers
Movement 4
Nefandus
— Carlos Motta
Voices of Orchid Island
— Hu Tail-li
The Pearl Button (El Boton de nacar)
— Patrico Guzman
Movement 5
Y Berá – Bright Waters
— Jessica Sarah Rinland
Slow Action
— Ben Rivers
Flat Jungle (De platte jungle)
— Johan van der Kreuken
Movement 6
The Blackest Sea
— Peggy Ahwesh
A Moon Made of Iron (Una luna de hierro)
— Francisco Rodriguez
The worldly Cave
— Zhou Tao