Catalogue > Un extrait vidéo au hasard

LAS BREAS is an observational portrait of three tar pits, of which there are only six in the entire world. Situated in three distinct landscapes in Southern California – urban Los Angeles, the oil fields of the San Joaquin Valley, and Carpinteria Beach, LAS BREAS investigates the spaces between archiving the pre-historic and the contemporary industrial landscape. While skeletons of extinct megafauna and vintage animatronic beasts are on display in the heart of Hollywood, the sticky remains of ancient microscopic organisms seep to the surface of both land and sea. Of the earth, yet primordial and impenetrable, the bubbling tar that rises from the depths speaks of past extinction and human exploitation of the earth’s limited resources.

Laura Kraning’s moving image work has screened widely at international film festivals, museums, and galleries, such as the New York Film Festival’s Views from the Avant-Garde and Projections, International Film Festival Rotterdam, Edinburgh Film Festival, London Film Festival, Visions du Réel, MoMA’s Doc Fortnight, Art Toronto, Centre Pompidou, National Gallery of Art, and REDCAT Theater, among others. Her work has received awards at the 2010, 2015, and 2016 Ann Arbor Film Festival, 2016 Athens International Film Festival, and the 2018 Rencontres Internationales Sciences & Cinémas Film Festival. Blue Kraning’s documentary and narrative films have screened internationally at festivals and venues such as International Film Festival Rotterdam, Helsinki International Film Festival, Shanghai International Film Festival, Image Forum Festival, Ann Arbor Film Festival, Denver Film Festival, Nashville Film Festival, Festival du Nouveau Cinema, Los Angeles Filmforum, and the Walker Art Center. He has won numerous awards such as the IFP/Blockbuster Film Development Fund, The Morrow-Hues Screenwriting Award (finalist) and his television writing has garnered two Emmy Awards.