Strange Object

A red leather-bound album in the basement of The National Archives in London containing black and white aerial photographs of the so-called Z Unit, a remote territory and its people flung out at the edges of a vast empire. Is it an investigation into an ancient civilization? The covert documentation of an enemy force? Or the fictional evidence of an invented world? These questions and many more are raised in Pennell’s enigmatic essay on historical erasure, the fabrication of images, and technologies of terror as developed by an imperial power in a past not as distant as we like to think. (David Perrin)

This film will be shown as part of the screening SHORT FILM PROGRAMME 6: MYSTERIOUS OBJECTS.