An audiovisual postcard and a science-fiction diary filmed from the perspective of the director’s virtual alter ego from the age of loneliness, a future where digital technologies and AI have ravaged the world alongside environmental devastation, irreparable loss of biodiversity, and the dominance of the technosphere over the biosphere. Set in a future that (still) doesn’t exist, experimental documentary Notes from the Eremocene questions the idealized techno-optimistic model that lies ahead. From a curious, playful, and critical standpoint, director Viera Čákanyová explores the potential of blockchain technology and artificial intelligence in confronting the complex global problems that we humans create – climate change and the crisis of representative democracy. Combining diary-like film footage (shot on Super 8 and 16mm), raster graphics, and pixelated images created using 3D scanners, Čákanyová poetically and powerfully emphasizes the inherent tension between humanity’s analog and digital futures. As Nick Cave sings – who cares what the future brings? Eremocene is an eternal present anyway.
Awards and festivals:
Berlinale (2023) – world premiere; Dokufest (2023); Sun in a Net Awards (2023) – nomination for Best Documentary Film
Viera Čákanyová was born in 1980 in Bratislava. She studied Screenplay Writing at the Academy of Performing Arts in Bratislava (VŠMU) and obtained a degree in Documentary Film from the Film and TV School of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague (FAMU). In addition to making her own films, she also works as a screenplay consultant and editor for independent film productions. She is the author of an intuitive trilogy consisting of FREM (2019), White on White (2020), and Notes from the Eremocene (2023), linked by the following themes: artificial intelligence, the dystopian future of humanity, the conflict between the analog and the digital, nature and civilization, and climate change.
