In 'MATTER!', Samuel Feron offers an ambitious and haunting meditation on the birth, evolution, and subjugation of the physical world, all told through the silent lens of photography. Clocking in at 26 minutes, this experimental short film stretches the definition of cinema, leaning into the evocative stillness of image and the resonance of poetic narration and the sound from Archive to shape a metaphysical journey that is as much felt as seen.
Feron draws from his own photographs taken across Jordan, Ethiopia, Iceland, and Hawaii, places steeped in elemental drama and geological storytelling. These landscapes, absent of people yet heavy with their presence, act as the film’s characters. In a way, 'MATTER!' is a film where the protagonist is not a person or even a thing but an idea: the transformation of Nothingness into Something and the complex legacy that follows.
The film is structured into six acts, beginning with a whimsical, almost mythic prologue in which Nothingness, weary of its boundless dominion, relinquishes its existence, thus giving rise to Matter. This clever reversal of Genesis lore invites the viewer to consider the origins of existence not as a divine intervention but as cosmic fatigue, a philosophical shrug that births reality.
What makes 'MATTER!' so affecting is not just its visual strength but also its argument: that photography, even devoid of human subjects, is a powerful witness to history. Feron places us in the role of observer, not through dramatic events or documentary realism but through textures, shadows, and absences. These images, in their static silence, are charged with time. They hold memories.
Feron’s use of Archive music, sometimes dissonant, sometimes eerily nostalgic, enhances this atmosphere. It is as though the past itself is echoing through these landscapes, carried not by words or faces but by the terrain we leave behind.
'MATTER!' is not an easy film - nor is it meant to be. It requires attention, patience, and a willingness to meditate rather than consume. But for those who engage with it, it offers a deeply rewarding experience, an elegy for the earth, for memory, and for the unspoken power of photography to hold both beauty and warning.
Written by Vlad A.G