The distance between the staircase and the sky and Polykatoikia-Peripatos

Two films in dialogue, presented by Katerina Athanasopoulou as part of her AHRC funded doctoral research around XR, SfM photogrammetry, and a poetic collaborative practice of expanded documentary

The films presented form part of Katerina’s AHRC-funded research around XR, SfM photogrammetry, and a poetic collaborative practice of expanded documentary. They are in dialogue, as ‘Polykatoikia:Peripatos’ documents a particular site-specific exchange using mobile AR, and ‘The distance between the staircase and the sky’ was developed based on that ephemeral interaction.

Ascending a staircase in the centre of Athens makes room for reflection on everyday life, as both otherworldly and mundane. On a planet lit by neon and on a beach powered by cicadas, we twirl into a void measured by walking – one step at a time. The spoken poem running through the film derives from an AR exchange between an animator and a poet: a postcard sent from a summer holiday, as imagined during a walk to work. The animation forms a new planet from an old building, and speaks of the everyday as fantastic. The landscapes that the film walks-through (an eight-storey building, a market, a burnt forest) were captured on-foot through the ‘camera-walk: a performative shoot with a 360-camera aiming to translate the spherical video image into photogrammetric models.

‘The distance between the staircase and the sky’ has been screened in festivals including Tampere Film Festival 2023 and Zebra Poetry Film Festival 2023, and will have its London premiere at London Short Film Festival in January 2024.