SEDIMENTA: A science-(non)fiction fairy tale about rocks
SEDIMENTA: A science-(non)fiction fairy tale about rocks lays out the research developed in dialogue with my upcoming film Azken izpia, exploring the physical, cultural, and affective layers of a geological site along the Basque Coast. This publication is one of the outcomes of a two-year fellowship I undertook at the "Lectoraat" programme of the Netherlands Film Academy.
Built like the film, whose formats pile up as strata, the book layers essays, field notes, script excerpts, and "satellite" digressions, reading rocks as memory, image-making entities, and storytellers. It traces kinships between fossilisation and photographic processes, from ammonites in limestone to Daguerre's plates and astrophotography. Actors become sensitive devices for the non-human, while tourists, tide pools, the ruins of the Lemoiz nuclear plant, and petrified waste from Bilbao's blast furnaces share the stage with deep-time climate warnings and the Voyager golden record. Moving from mountain-building to the Pale Blue Dot, the book asks how cinema might bring the background to the foreground and let a place become the story.
Author: Juan Palacios
Editor: Sophie Wright
Graphic Designer: Monika Grūzīte
Printer & website pictures: Rob Stolk
Publisher: Research Department, Netherlands Film Academy
Co-publisher: DOC EDITIONS
C (copyright) 2025
ISBN: 9789071681752
Creative Commons: CC BY-NC-SA 4.0