The Downwinders is an 20-minute experimental narrative video that reflects on the love of a native landscape and its benign sedentary inhabitants via its opposite, the sombre narrative of nomadic men of power.
The video uses experimental techniques inspired by the emblem of the mirror. The video is composed in two parts that reflect and speculate upon one another with pairs of opposite concepts, like Image & Sign, and Geography & History.
THEMES & IDEAS
The term downwinder refers to individuals and communities who are exposed to radioactive contamination and nuclear fallout. Although the catastrophic event in this video is never fully explained, there is an implication of biochemical testing on an unwitting population.
The event itself, however, is not central to the idea.
It is the unpredictable, far-reaching effects that occur when one group of people develops technology to assert dominance over another.
The theme is as old as civilization, to be sure, but with the modern threat of omnicide, the total extinction of the human species as a result of human action. Furthermore, the threat exists in peace as well as war, for capitalism in its current pathological form is producing an environmental threat on a global scale. In a sense, we are all potential downwinders, victims of our own hubris, aggression, and short-term thinking.
History, as defined as the narrative of nomadic men of power, is held up as a mirror to create a poetic reflection that favours the sedentary, the pacific, and the bucolic.
THE PLOT
Part I.
The setting: a rural landscape, late in the day.
The era: mid-to-late-20th century.
The action: an unseen catastrophic event occurs in a harsh desolate land; the native population is gone.
A lone man dressed in a parka and wearing mirrored sunglasses picks his way through the derelict setting of disused railroads and stations, empty animal paddocks, and the debris of slaughterhouses.
He walks along a narrow-gauge railroad.
Occasionally he leaves the tracks to prod the earth with a small instrument and capture images with an old rangefinder camera. He seems to be taking the measure of his environment, or gathering evidence, but there is futility, a half-heartedness in his actions.
The man is silent. The only sounds are of wind and the sonorous effects of its relentless activity (flapping clapboard, rustling grass, etc). He is utterly alone.
The man notices a distant flickering light. He spies on the light with his binoculars. He sees a figure in the landscape.
The man advances upon the distant figure, which, upon inspection, turns out to be a scarecrow dressed in an old blazer. He rifles through the pockets of the dreadful spectre. He finds nothing.
He sits and rests. He gnaws on a chunk of pemmican, spits out the gristle.
Near the scarecrow he spots a piece of paper held in place by a rock. It is a page ripped from a book of reproductions, a depiction of Bosch’s Ship of Fools (the camera tilts up the painting, from the group of drunk figures at the bottom, up the trunk of the tree, to the image of a face peering out of the foliage). The man folds the image and pockets it.
He continues to explore. He takes a photograph of graffiti on corrugated metal.
He comes across a pair of work boots, side by side, at a train station, seemingly waiting for a train that will never arrive. He spies a rusting boxcar, and climbs in…
The first part will have the following qualities:
1. Narratively slight, yet richly evocative of place;
2. Languid, mobile camerawork;
3. B&W cinematography with available light (natural with no grading);
4. No dialogue or music, only natural diegetic sound;
Imagery with poetic or metaphorical implications;
Respect for Aristotelian unities of time, place, and action (no jumps in location, time of day, etc.).
Part II.
The man’s face is seen in sidelight with a slat pattern and a pitch black background. He removes his glasses and inspects his appearance in the reflective lens, as if he is readying himself for a presentation. It is the first time we see his eyes. He begins to address the camera or an unseen inquisitor. It is an extended monologue (see MONOLOGUE) that begins as a timeline of his collaboration in dubious activities against the missing population. He reveals himself to be a scientist responsible for the agenda that caused the local people to vanish. It is a sort of confession.
The second part will have the following qualities:
Colour imagery and fixed camera;
Narratively rich, favouring oral storytelling over visual representation;
Direct camera address;
Single take (no cuts, cutaways, etc.);
Plain prose devoid of metaphor;
Theatricality (performance, lighting).
MIRROR STRUCTURE
The audiovisual and narrative elements originate from the emblem of the mirror. The idea of the mirror gives us the concept and its reflection; hence the video is split into two parts, each part composed of concepts with its reflection in the other.
MONOLOGUE
MAN. Ladies and gentlemen, let me tell you a tale. Someone had the idea… was it the midnight shift supervisor?… to host a fair, you know, with a midway, and so on, as a cover to our operation. It turned out to be a quite bit of inspiration. It solved a lot of logistical problems, like how to get W-74 into the test population. The locals were not keen on our setting up a laboratory in their area, our 24-hour operations, our generators, our lights… not to mention our very visible security team. They were a suspicious lot. Our cover was agronomy research, how to improve soil conditions in the area. Nothing grew there anyway. It gave us a good alibi for our comings and goings. All under the guise of collecting soil samples. Of course, we had a few problems… There were protests outside the main gate sometimes, even some light vandalism. Not a big deal. One has to expect that sort of thing, and our security were told not to retaliate against the locals in any way. We were really firm about this. In fact, we had to sack one guy because he broke the teeth of some poor fellow, not causing any problem… just standing in the wrong place at the wrong time. We paid for his new teeth, by the way, and gave him and his family a new refrigerator. Good PR, as it turned out. Anyway… we were to be benign, no impact. We found that a little money to the right people quietened their lot pretty well. Anyways, the fair, as I was saying. It was the midnight supervisor’s idea, by the way… It was decided we would hold this fair outside the main gates for the locals to, you know, have a bit of fun… our way of showing appreciation for them putting up with us… that’s how we pitched it. An all-family affair. It was summer solstice… long days. It was not a big setup by any means. We got one to those traveling fairs to come… the ones that move around the country all year… three or four rides, a dozen booths, games, food, you know. Not very big. Actually, at night, with the lights… it looked pretty good. And to the locals, it must have seemed pretty grand alright. It was set up for two days over the weekend. I had Saturday off for a change, so I went to check it out. It was actually fun. Things I remembered from when I was a kid. I ate llama empanadas, drank some beers, got pleasantly pissed. All the while, we were watching the locals. The delivery system was the balloon, you see? W-74 could be added with the helium without affecting the buoyancy. We could mix the W-74 with helium, inflate the balloons, and send them off with the local kids. Our team cleared out before the test balloons were inflated, you see. We made a few dozen without the compound first, to make a show of it. Then we pretended the valve to the helium tank was broken, until, just before closing the fairground for the night, we said we had it working again, c’mon kids, gather round, balloons for everyone. We used yellow balloons for the W-74. The valve had a switch, so we could turn the W-74 on or off. Most of us were safely inside the compound save for the few selected to fill and dispense the test balloons. There was bound to be be leakage. In keeping with the fairground theme, those selected were dressed as clowns with a hidden gas mask underneath the clown face. That way we could work safely and get the delivery system to the locals in an innocuous way, you see? The fair really did solve plenty of problems. It was an expensive operation, but they were throwing money at us for the stuff. We reasoned these kids would be so thrilled with their loot from the fair, they’d hold onto their stuff pretty tightly. Balloons of course are permeable, that’s why they deflate. Well, depends how you treat the surface. Still we tested a variety of balloons from different manufacturers. We found one that worked best for our needs. This would give us the slow release we needed for W-74. Within a few hours enough of the agent would have been dispersed to have an effect. After 24 hours the stuff would no longer be active and the area would be safe again. We did count on a few stray balloons getting away, but it was felt to be acceptable… The balloon would come down in the test area anyway, according to our calculations. You might get a dozing sheep! Now the effects of W-74 are supposed to be short-lived. It is a sort of hypnotic – narcoleptic, pretty powerful, but no lasting effects. It would give you, say, 24 hours or so, a population in a dreamless sleep. And with no memory of the experience. We sent out our covert security team that night to report on the results. It worked very well, just as we hoped. It was nighty-night for the whole town. A few people had even fallen asleep outside. We didn’t know where they lived but we made sure they were in no danger. The night was mild. The peak of summer. As for scavengers, even the animals were asleep! We stayed away the next day. On the third day, Monday, we are preparing to send representatives into town, and what do we hear? Church bells! On a Monday! It could only mean one thing! The locals were waking up, thinking it was Sunday, calling the flock to service! Sure enough, a few of us ventured into town after the service. Did you have a good time at the fair yesterday? Yes, yes… No ill effects from eating too much? No, not at all… although a few had drunk too much and passed out outside their houses. A shame! But they are alright? Yes, no worse for wear. Eventually the anomaly was noticed… a radio broadcaster was thought to have announced the wrong date, to everyone’s amusement, but eventually they figured it out. Still, time for these people operates differently. If they think it’s Monday and you tell ‘em it’s Tuesday, they shrug and say, OK. They don’t have that mania for the clock like we do. Gain a day, lose a day… it’s all the same to them. Of course, this worked in our favour, you know. Anyway, so, we had what we considered to be a successful first trial of W-74 in the field. (He pauses to light a cigarette, contemplates the smoke roiling around his fingers.) But, there were problems. It took a few weeks before anything happened, but then, our nighttime sentries began to report sightings of local people wandering around in the dark. They appeared to be sleepwalking along the railroad that ran near our compound. Our guards would shout at them, and this would startle them out of their trance, and they’d scurry back to their beds. At first it was one or two a night, then three or four. Within a week, a dozen sightings… The results always the same. Soon, the town was full of panicky stories of possessions, or some such folk tale. The dozen turned into two dozen, and, what’s worse, shouts were becoming ineffective. One of the brighter of the guards let off a round from his revolver near the ear of one the more stubborn walkers. It worked, but you can imagine the effect of a gunshot in the middle of the night on our group, let alone the locals. A pretty fuss that caused! Eventually, we could not rouse one. Then another. We brought them into our tiny medical clinic… hooked them up to IVs. They would succumb in days if we didn’t intervene. A crowd formed around our main gate, accusing us of kidnapping their townsfolk. A claim, as it turns out, not far from the truth. We sent our resident medical doctor and her nurse to examine these sleepwalkers. They were in a state of deep somnambulation. Eventually, 100 per cent of the population was affected by this walking sleep. We corralled them all, arranged for a special train to transport them quietly, you know, to the coast. To this day, so far as I know, they are all in a private hospital, being treated. Not one of them has come out of this state, and that was six months ago. Of course, testing was stopped immediately. We were all really worried. It’s not like we wanted to hurt anybody. There were dissenters in our group, angry at the dodgy science, the speed to trial, and of course… the potential for second-hand exposure. The laboratory was closed by our benefactors. We were given big cheques in exchange for signing a non-disclosure agreement. (Pause, weak smile.) And yet, here I am, telling you all this. (Long pause.) Last week, I woke up standing next to my bed. Each night since, I have woken up a bit further away from my bed… the kitchen, the common hallway. Each time I have awoken on my own, but I know where this is going. I am keeping myself up now with stimulants for two days at a time, so I can try to prolong my time a bit. As you can see, I am not well, not well at all. I don’t know why I came back. (Pause.) It’s funny, I studied agronomy in school, which ended up being our cover for the operation, but I never did it for real.
© Michael Mills 2011
