Signatures of Earth: a practice-led investigation into planetary regard in documentary film

This Doctor of Creative Arts project is composed of a 76-minute documentary film titled Signatures of Earth and a written exegesis. Signatures of Earth is a cinematic elegy, proposed in the form of an experimental gestalt, concerned with Earth-bound stories in the Anthropocene. The film was made partly as a response to totalising planetary narratives emerging both from the natural sciences and social theory often appearing in documentary films. This work reflects the complexity of living with the story of the Anthropocene and the interrelated story of the space age, and how these stories are construed through documentary films. The form of Signatures of Earth is a series of fragmented encounters filmed during a cross-continental journey from Canberra to Exmouth in Western Australia to witness a total solar eclipse in the aftermath of the planetary COVID-19 pandemic. The exegesis sets out the film’s conceptual underpinnings and its relationship to issues concerning ‘planetary regard’ in contemporary documentary filmmaking. Signatures of Earth, and its praxis, contributes to discourse on the narrative framework of documentary filmmaking practices that address planetary futures.