The Shadow Drone Project began as a collaboration between choreographer Charles Linehan and Lithuanian aerialphotographer Karolis Janulis, filming planned and unplanned events in civic and natural environments from an unmanned aerial vehicle.
Shot in morning or late afternoon sunshine, the aerial viewpoint offers a unique cinematic perspective of dynamic patterning, where shadows of people and objects are sometimes revealed to be more present than their actual form.
The film also deliberately identifies with the same viewpoint as surveillance techniques that cross legal and national borders, occupying the same downward gaze, but here set apart from its violent and military context.
Director Statement
Shot in England, central Europe, and China during a two-year period the film can be seen as presenting a series of tensions or oppositional couples.
An impression of ambiguity is created as to the extent or limit of the choreographic organisation, posing the question of where the boundary lies between the organised and the non-organised. The impression created is of a ubiquity of the choreographic; the sense that all of the depicted elements are somehow subject to deliberate organisation, even the non-human kinetic material, like the flocking of birds, or the patterning in water.
The film occupies the same space that is shared with globalised militarisation and surveillance – crossing both legal and national borders but in a non-violent and non-military context.
“I see dance and film making as a deeply personal, gestural and life-affirming act”.
Charles Linehan
- Titel: The Shadow Drone Project
- Director//Regie: Charles Linehan
- Choreography//Choreographie: Charles Linehan
- Country of Production//Land: United Kingdom, Lithuania
- Year of Production//Jahr: 2018
- Duration//Dauer: 00:09:45
- Camera//Kamera: Charles Linehan, Karolis Janulis
- Sound//Ton: J.Clark
- Trailer: https://vimeo.com/321737163