Stratum
2018, HD video, 12 mins.
Jacob Cartwright and Nick Jordan
Soundtrack score by Lord Mongo

Stratum is a film that navigates through post-industrial landscapes on the European Route of Industrial Heritage, from Britain’s abandoned South Yorkshire coal seams to the culturally re-purposed collieries of the Ruhr Valley, Germany, via the former coal-mining region of Wallonia, Belgium. Contrasting the past and present, contemporary scenes are combined with archival film material, alongside audio narration and excerpts from Misère au Borinage (directed by Henri Storck and Joris Ivens, 1934), a socialist documentary made in the depths of the Great Depression.

Stratum frames the industrial, social and ecological genealogy of a pan-European region, capturing the economic, structural and physical transformation of post-industrial sites, where particular flora and fauna species have colonised the disturbed landscape.

Stratum is a companion film to the artists’ two-screen 40 minute work Strata, commissioned by contemporary art agency Arts & Heritage.

Awarded 'Best Film', Crosscuts Environmental Humanities Film Festival Stockholm, 2018:
‘Stratum’ is a fluid meditation superbly cutting across film-making and archival practice. Its narrative style effectively interlaces various temporalities, diffracting the lives of people and minerals, and envisioning the historical metamorphosis of places - Crosscuts Jury

Honourable Mention, Minimalen Short Film Festival, Trondheim, 2019:
A film that impressed us with layers of raw material from a few locations in different eras, weaved together with a mesmerising soundtrack. The archive material presents a view of the human condition at the height of the industrial age, which – by means of filmmaking – is revealed as surprisingly relevant to our day and age

Further resourses and recommended campaigns:

https://gofossilfree.org/uk/

http://transitioninaction.org/

https://350.org/

https://www.tuc.org.uk/research-analysis/reports/just-transition-greener-fairer-economy