OTHER WORLDS

"An ode to the worlds forever beyond our reach, hidden in the mysterious depths of our cosmos."

About the work:
Since 2013 I have been developing a personal approach to near Infra-Red cinematography with the idea that looking at our world under a different light could give us access to other spheres of perceptions. I produced a first work in black and white in 2015 named Wilderness, then a second one - Eclipse in 2018 - with those techniques.
To create OTHER WORLDS, I've travelled to the Atacama desert in Northern Chile in summer 2015 with a Near-Infrared sensitive high resolution camera and shot as much footage as I could during my 3 weeks stay.
On the Altiplano, It looked like time literally stopped its course a few billions years ago, when our Earth was going trough its primitive stages of evolutions, before any life appeared yet. The night sky is deep and offers to the naked eye an incredibly clear view of our Galaxy. Overall, the feeling of bellonging to something much vaster then our Earth can't be but strickingly obvious for any visitors.
I kept the footage preciously and worked on it periodically since then, improving the shots and the compositions when I had the time.
Lately I was looking for more material to include in the film. The works on Nebulas are the fruit of a great collaboration between Visual Artist Teun van der Zalm and myself. I also composed shots using the best Nasa photographic material of our solar system I could finda and also footage from weather Cinematographers Dustin Farrell and Chad Cowan, and some of my own previous footage.
This short film is certainly a visualisation of far away planets, but like a metaphor, It also wants to be an invitation to explore worlds that are much closer to us. The worlds of our perceptions - our perspective on Men and its place in the Universe -The way we see our planet, the fragile yet violent chemestry that is necessary for life to emerge anywhere in the Universe.
My wish is that, by exploring these exotic landscapes, one can have a glimpse of the infinite multitude of worlds that populate the universe, but also imagine the history of our own planet well before we were born and thus have a better perspective toward our origins, fate and place in the universe.
IVAN MARIA FRIEDMAN
Direction, Cinematography, postproduction, visual effects, compositing and editing
TEUN VAN DER ZALM
Visual Effects Artist
DUSTIN FARRELL, CHAD COWAN
Additionnal Cinematography
ALEXANDER OLFERT
Compositing assistan