The sand that ate the sea (2020)

The Sand That Ate the Sea was created over four years with the South Australian opal town of Andamooka, where my uncle is an opal miner. Unfolding across film, music, photography, and installation, the work follows the journey of a young opal miner as he is forced to face the memory of the mysterious disappearance of his father in a great flooding storm, while the same storm reappears on his own horizon a decade later.

The South Australian desert is a mystical place. Millennia ago it was an ocean, and opalised aquatic dinosaur fossils are still found in the dirt there today, collapsing deep time into the present. It is a place of arid land and old magic, of endless salt flats and sweeping red earth. Andamooka sits within this mythic desert, once a seabed, and the opals found there remain a living testament to that history.

This land is stolen land, and a wounded land. The force of that wound works in strange ways on those who have come to it now, and those who came before.

Credits

Executive Producers: Julianne English, Cameron Gray, Matthew Helderman, Johnathan Sheldon, Cameron Cubbison, John Rhodes, Angela Thompson, and Ian Thompson.
Producer: Steven Garrett
Director and Writer: Matthew Thorne
Associate Producer: Zoe Edema

Director of Photography: Aaron McLisky
Director of Photography (Pickups): Andrew Gough
Production Designer: Benjamin Ashley
Editor: Katerina Borys
Sound Designer: Chris O'Neill
VFX Supervisor: Pedro Motta
Colourist: Daniel Stonehouse

First AD: Christopher Seeto
Steadicam: Tim Walsh
1st AC: Chris Braga
2nd AC / Data Wrangler: Danielle Payne
Gaffer: Max Gerschabach
Grip: Martin Fargher
Sound Recordist: Luke Fuller
Art Director: Aisha Phillips
Art Department Assistant: John Flaws

Original Music Composed by Luke Howard
Album available online (via Mercury KX / Apple Music, Spotify)
Album available on vinyl (via Hobbledehoy Records)

Assembly Editor: Rolando Olalia
Assistant Editors: Eliza Cox, Shannon Michaelas, Jana Plumm
Compositor (The Refinery): Chris Betteridge
Additional Sound Design: Daniel Mueller, Soren Maryasin
Dialogue Editing: Brendan O'Neill

Title Design: Nadeem Tiafau

Kokatha Community Liaison: Glen Wingfield

Editorial by The Butchery
Sound Design by FrostFire Audio
VFX by Push VFX
Colour by Crayon
DCP by Postlab.io

Camera Equipment provided by Gearhead
Opals Provided by Dukes Bottle House Motel & Andamooka Opal Showroom
Catering by Tanya Simpson, Pippa Stafford and Charlie Sim

Produced with the assistance of the ScreenCraft Short Film Grant & Bondit Media Finance

Community Cast: Stacey Dadleh, John Wilby, Paul Uhlik, Taj Gow-Smith, Clive "Spready" Spreadborough, Alan "Staffy" Stafford Heath, Stefan Bilka, Joe Sach, Drago "Tarzan" Antic, Val Harrison, Mash Clifford, Annie Uhlik, Jacinta Carrr, Tanya Simpson, Pippa Stafford, Claudia Mitchell, Greta Howard, Nikki Johnson

Special thanks to Greg Franklin, Jack Hutchings, Matt Glasser, Freya Maddock, Jospeh Sach, Margot Duke, Simon Quilliam, Peter Taubers, Lester & Gill Rowley, John West, Clint & Jodie Gow-Smith, Stefan Bilka, Kendal Secker, Conan "The Barbarian" Fahey, Samantha Collings, Mandy Masters, Rebecca Dugan, Rachael Ford-Davies, Greg "Greggie" Franklin, Cowel Electric, APOMA, The Pool Collective, Andamooka SES, Andamooka CFS, Charle & Co. Coffee, Roxby Travel and Cruise, Andamooka Boo-Teek Op-Shop, Coates Hire Roxby Downs, Roxby Downs Motocross Club, The Tuckerbox & Staff

Thank you to the community of Andamooka, South Australia.