Tidelight 16mins, 16:9 HD Video (2015)
Tidelight is set on Cornwallis wharf near Auckland: a much favoured location for local fishermen. It is choreographed as an ‘infinite’ zoom along the wharf, exploring the changing light from dawn to midday and the observed activities of the fishermen. Each shot represents one progressive fragment of time, slowly leading the eye towards a vanishing point beyond the wharf. These shots are seamlessly layered to create intersecting time windows, which advance towards the camera as the eye is led forwards via the zooming lens. This creates the illusion of seeing forwards in time as one looks towards the horizon. At one moment several morning suns can be seen simultaneously, as they rise in the sky and the dawn light moves from shades of orange into blue.
As the film progresses, the camera moves step by step up the wharf, capturing ever more intimate observations of the activities taking place. More fishermen arrive, the wharf fills and conversations become more animated. We hear fragments of chatter as the fishermen share notes about their craft. One visitor asks about this film and its intentions: “Are you time travelling as you move up the wharf?…When you see the next star after the sun…you are seeing it as it was a year and a half ago!“
The interwoven montage of time windows gradually increases in complexity, abstracting the imagery, creating visual echoes, repetitions and cadences as the journey progresses. Lines are cast, gulls wait for morsels of bait, and the gentle lapping of the waves pervades everything.
The film pays homage to the work of Michael Snow and his seminal, structuralist work Wavelength in its use of a ‘perpetual’ zoom, the exploration of a single pro-filmic space using a fixed tripod and its choreography of moments in time. However, rather than construct a narrative mise-en-scene, a purely observational stance is adopted, with no attempt to influence the activities being captured by the camera.
First screened at Lyrical Visions 2015. Also on Auckland Live Digital Screen, Aotea Square 2019
The Descent 8 mins HD Video (2016)
The Descent is a portrait of Taranaki Falls in Tongariro National Park, New Zealand. The film takes a visual journey from a familiar, representational view of the falls towards an ever more painterly, expressionistic response, as the stream and falls are transformed into an abstract kinesis of light and form.
The film is structured around a selection of quotations from the journals of John Muir, the pioneer conservationist who wrote extensively about his wanderings in America’s National Parks from 1867-1911. His quotations form a highly personal, visionary meditation on the beauty of the natural world, becoming an elegiac conversation between a poet and the landscape. They also read as a commentary on the film making process, as a lyrical response to the spirit and atmosphere of the place. The spoken words become one element in an electro-acoustic soundscape built from ambient sources collected near the falls.
The film’s ‘heart beat’ is a visual pulse, created by radically slowing the perceived movements of light and water. The pulse also acts as a reflexive examination of the persistence of vision, and the moments when a sequence of still images first create the illusion of movement. The film combines time lapse cinematography with intimate studies of the water surfaces and surrounding vegetation. The dynamics of the montage act as metaphor for the water’s journey, tracing a path from the alpine plateau, over the edge of the lava flow and onwards towards the gorges of the Wairere Stream at dusk.
“How grand to move about in the very tissue of falling columns, and in the very birthplace of their heavenly harmonies, looking outward as from windows of ever-varying transparency and staining!” John Muir (describing Yosemite Falls).
First screened at Lyrical Visions 2016.
Breathe 12 mins 30 secs Stereo HD Video (2017)
Breathe is a collaboration with UK based electro-acoustic composer Monty Adkins. Both the sound piece and its visual counterpart share similar concerns. Adkins soundtrack, entitled Mapping depicts the slow evolution of a landscape. In his own words, it “leads the listener through unknown territory, arriving at landing points from time to time by means of transformed sounds whose origin is from the real world. The work unfolds structurally as material emerges and is incorporated into the musical construction.”
Likewise, the moving imagery explores an ‘unknown’ landscape, accessible only via the optical characteristics of a macro lens, and transformations derived by slowly pulling focus from extreme close up to the horizon. It is a meditation on sunlight, shadow and natural form, shot along a number of bush walks in the Waitakere Regional Park near Auckland.
Its formal structure explores the relationship between the observer and the act of quiet observation. The observer’s presence is alluded to via a visual pulse, whose pace is often suggestive of slow inward and outward breaths. These visual transformations are echoed by the musical form of the soundtrack, as natural sounds evolve, mutate, then return to their points of reference. Simultaneously, the eye journeys through a range of colour fields and tonal moods, observing the ways sharp outlines dissolve and reform within seas of bokeh, as pathways are traced through the undergrowth, towards the sun.
“His intensely tuned use of macro and long lens to move the viewer’s gaze between the extreme close up and beyond was beautifully shot and edited and demonstrates Sercombe’s attention to detail, his analytical skills and drive to discover a new poetic and musical moving image language.” Diane Blomfield Producer, Going West Festival, Auckland
“..this is exquisite. The most beautiful video I’ve ever watched. I shall revisit it often.” Deborah Wilkinson, Film Director
First screened at Lyrical Visions 2017. Also on Auckland Live Digital Screen, Aotea Square 2019
Find Me a Word 4 mins 47 secs HD Video (2017)
This cinepoem is a collaboration with performance poet Gus Simonovic and composer Sylvi MacCormac. It was shot along the Laingholm Estuary and around the South Titirangi peninsula in the winter of 2017. It explores ways in which kinetic text can be ‘absorbed’ into the details of the landscape it refers to, rendering the two elements as a symbiotic whole. It was commissioned for screening at the Going West Writers Festival, Auckland 2017. Also at Lyrical Visions 2017
Detritus 5 mins 51 secs HD Video (2017)
A genetically modified performer, reconstructed painstakingly for the silver screen, delivers a word harvest with a nod and a wink to T.S Eliot’s The Waste Land. The pro-filmic treatment deconstructs and reorganises a visual record of the poet’s reading in ways which echo the sentiments being expressed. Poem written and performed by Gus Simonovic.
First screened at Lyrical Visions 2017.
Crossings 10 mins HD Video B&W (2018)
The film is a visual journey, set in Whatipu, West Auckland, undertaken via infrared cinematography. It represents a personal response to the qualities of austere beauty, solitude and grandeur experienced by many visitors to this wild, remote area.
It uses time lapse and repetition as a means to articulate kinetic elements within the observed landscape, such as wave, water and cloud motion. These are then choreographed in both visual and musical terms, by scoring each musical element in direct response to the visual movements, their sense of tidal and temporal flow and overall mood. These natural rhythms create a sense of the space as a living, breathing organism, prone to sudden and dramatic changes of temperament.
The journey begins at Paratutae Island, and moves slowly inland via the dunes and marshes towards the Waitakere Ranges, before returning to a wide open expanse of sand and sky.
Music composed and performed by Brigid Ursula Bisley.
First screened at Lyrical Visions 2018. Also Bueu International Short Film Festival, Spain 2018. Auckland Live Digital Screen, Aotea Square 2019
If They Ask 3 mins 40 secs HD Video (2018)
A collaborative cinepoem exploring ideas of family, the ever changing bonds of love, and anxiety for the future. It was made by Martin Sercombe (camera and editing), Gus Simonovic (poem and performance), Siri Risnes and Livnola Risnes Simonovic (performance).
First screened at Lyrical Visions 2018.
Storytelling 9 mins HD Video (2019)
Two poems by Gus Simonovic challenge our familiar perceptions of the words and objects which surround us. Martin Sercombe undertakes a parallel, visual exploration of a domestic environment, using a macro lens to transform everyday objects into odd and unfamiliar states. The electro-acoustic soundtrack by Yota Kobayashi and others builds a rich atmosphere of suggested off screen activity, drawing the viewer into imaginary worlds beyond the camera frame.
“The seemingly banal is taken to new levels of magnificence.” Patricia Wilden, Photographer
“Beyond Brilliant you two… Applause… Appreciat’d & Charm’d. Subscrib’d and Share’d” Poetry Train
First screened at Lyrical Visions 2019. Also screened at Aotearoa Poetry Film Festival 2023
This is the Garden 3 mins HD Video (2019)
A visual response to the e.e. cummings poem of the same name, about the cycle of life and death. The macro imagery is set in a suburban garden in West Auckland.
First screened at Lyrical Visions 2019.
One Sunday in Winter 5 mins 50 secs HD Video (2020)
This film poem was inspired by a day trip to Karekare, a wild and beautiful expanse of untouched coastline in West Auckland. Expressionist in approach, it tells its story via hand written haikus, digital painting, ambient sounds and treated flute. Each sequence is composed of many layers of moving imagery, each with its own rhythmic pulse. Animation of waves, clouds and gulls in flight combine to form an abstract landscape of minimal brush work and painterly textures. The film evokes the sudden changes in weather typical of a winter’s day, as the film moves from sunlit calm, across a windswept ocean into rain drenched twilight.
The music was composed by Richard Ingamells and Richard Reynolds.
“This film is like a moving watercolour. A calming film with perfect musical composition.” Top of the South Film Festival, New Zealand
Festival screenings:
Lyrical Visions V, Auckland 2020.
The 9th International Video Poetry Festival, Athens, 2021
13th Seoul Yeongdeungpo International Extreme-short Image & Film Festival 2021
Nature and Culture – Poetry Film Festival, Copenhagen 2021
Zebra Poetry Film Festival – Berlin, November 2021
still … life 5 mins 17 secs HD Video (2020)
Gus Simonovic’s poem and performance is a bitter sweet observation of life under the threat of Covid. Martin Sercombe’s camerawork transforms the poet’s gestures and expressions into a sequence of painterly tableaux that echo the poem’s sentiments, balanced between fear, foreboding and a reassuring connection with nature.
With music by The Mind Orchestra.
First screened at Lyrical Visions V, Auckland, December 2020.
sundial 1 minute UHD Video (2022)
This is the first in a series of one minute videos. Each short film was initially inspired by a still photograph. The films investigate the notion of extending a photograph into the time preceding or succeeding its moment of creation, via time lapse or other structural means.
the gap (if waves could dance) 1 minute UHD Video (2022)
Set in Piha, New Zealand, this is the second in the series on one minute videos. Each video takes its inspiration from one photograph by the artist, which is then extended using a variety of time based strategies.
flow flutter flower 1 minute UHD video (2022)
The third in the series of one minute videos. It investigates how the eye reads static images as they become ever more fleeting. The soundtrack is an electroacoustic piece by Jaap Blonk.
finger painting 1 minute 10 secs UHD video (2022)
A further edition in the one minute video series, extending still images back and forth in time.
Night is Paper 4 mins 28 secs UHD Video 2022
Night is Paper transports its audience into a realm where reality is fluid and understanding remains tantalizingly just out of reach. The narrative invites viewers to eavesdrop on the lives of shadowy characters shrouded in ambiguity. Concealed faces and obscure rituals unfold within a painterly labyrinth, whilst enigma blankets every scene.
The work is a cinepoetic collaboration between artist film maker Martin Sercombe and novelist Dr Thom Conroy. The soundscape is a remix of found sources from the catalogue of the Free Music Archive.
This film was selected for Frame to Frames : Your Eyes Follow II
Ekphrastic Poetry Film Prize, FOTOGENIA film festival, Mexico City, 2023
POETRY BOOK / LIBRO DE POESIA
The accompanying bilingual book including the ekphrastic poems, colour film stills, synopses, artists details and a QR LINK to the 17-film curation is published by
http://www.liberatedwords.com
liberatedwordspoetryfilms@gmail.com
Songs 10 mins 25 secs UHD Video 2022
The American poet E. E. Cummings’ work began to enter the public domain in 2019, which then allowed other artists to make use of his poetry in derivative works across a range of media. Taking advantage of this, Songs chooses five short poems from his first three volumes: Tulips and Chimneys, & and XLI Poems as the basis for extension into the realm of the moving image.
The translation poses a number of challenges, namely finding ways to preserve the lyrical flow of Cummings’ language as it might be read or spoken, whilst preserving his idiosyncratic use of syntax, line breaks and punctuation. The second challenge is finding appropriate ways to illustrate Cummings’ word images without over defining or misconstruing their meanings or intents. These five works make no claims to have solved these problems. Rather, they attempt to preserve the spirit of the original works via complementary sounds, music and imagery, reinventing and reimagining them in the process.
All the images were generated using Midjourney, and the soundtracks comprise of public domain music selected from the Free Music Archive.
First screened at Square Edge Community Art Centre, Palmerston North 2023.
Te Marae o Hine 11 mins 30 secs Double Width UHD Video 2022
Te Marae o Hine is a moving image portrait of The Square, the central park in Palmerston North. Its name was originally gifted to the first Major of the city by the Maori chief, Matene Te Whiwhi, as a gesture of peace between all its citizens. This portrait explores its matrix of paths, trees, grass and architectural landmarks, as they are traversed from dawn to dusk by visitors and city dwellers from many different cultures.
The film adopts a mirroring technique which divides each frame into four interlocking sections, together creating panoramic views of the park. The intention is to underline the geometries of the space and view the relationships between its built and natural environment in a fresh and idiosyncratic way. At the same time, this device shows passing movements of people and objects four times, creating a kind of surreal, synchronized choreography.
The film begins at dawn when there is little or no human activity in the park. The camera observes the changing light and movement of birds and clouds, establishing a contemplative mood. Activity peaks around the middle of the day and returns to quiet meditation as dusk turns to nightfall, and the lights on the clock tower are illuminated.
The soundtrack music, entitled Slumber, was recorded live at Te Kōpū Mānia o Kirikiriroa Marae and performed by Dr. Mesmer’s Private Army. It opens to the sound of the Taonga Puoro, resonating with the park’s identity as a place of peace. The work as a whole is intended to evoke mindfulness and meditation. Combined with the imagery, it seeks to further extend the sense of the space as a sanctuary in the heart of the city, a place to breathe and relax.
Dr Mesmer’s Private Army are Eszter Le Couteur – Violin, Horomona Horo – Taonga Puoro, Yotam Levy – Cello, Kent Macpherson – guitar, keyboards and treatments and Jeremy Mayall – keyboard and electronics.
“This cinematic approach fuses the prosaic moments of human activity in The Square with the mysterious sense of timelessness that emerges through the use of fractured and carefully blended vistas where people emerge in and out of existence as they saunter in and out of the margins of mirrored scenes. In this beautiful film, the everyday encounters deep time through the multiplication of built and natural spaces: the fleeting moments memorialised in the almost mathematical precision of Sercombe’s newly imagined spaces…‘Te Marae o Hine’ evokes the peace embedded in the space’s name and offers a contemporary interpretation blending the sacred with the mundane.” Dr Thom Conroy
First screened at Square Edge Community Art Centre, Palmerston North 2023. Also screened at Lyrical Visions Poetry Film Festival 2024.
The Mask 4 mins UHD Video 2023
The film began with a poem written for the Given Words project organized by Palabras Prestadas and Charles Olsen in Andalusia, Spain. The words given were: broken/roto, reflection/reflejo, disappear/desaparecer, path/camino and paint/pintar.
The words inspired the story of a protagonist looking back at his life; its dramas, joys and disappointments. Whilst considering the different personas he has adopted, he finally accepts them all as aspects of his humanity.
The imagery for the film was created using AI, with a set of prompts suggesting a journey back through memories collected in an old journal of notes and faded photographs. The soundtrack is a remix of several sources: the BBC sound effects library and experimental soundscapes by John Bartmann and File under Toner.
First screened at Aotearoa Poetry Film Festival, Wellington, New Zealand 2023.
Popa Pete’s Pot 4 mins 30 secs UHD Video 2024
This film poem is a homage to Diane Blomfield’s father and explores the rhythms and repetitions of his daily domestic life, using AI generated ink and watercolour illustrations. It fondly recalls his evolving relationships with his children as the years pass by.
The poem was written and narrated by Diane Blomfield. The imagery and editing is by Martin Sercombe. The music was composed by Amos Turner.
First screened at Lyrical Visions Poetry Film Festival 2024
Awakening to Timelessness 6 mins UHD Video 2024
‘Awakening to Timelessness’, is a cine-poetic collaboration between film maker Martin Sercombe, poet Ron Riddell and composer Raeul Pierard.
The film features four poems by Riddell, drawn from his book of the same name, inspired by the village of Titirangi and its Waitakere rainforest surrounds in West Auckland, New Zealand. In his foreword to the book, he talks of the beauty to be found there as ‘a clarion call to respond creatively to the song of place…the song of the bush, birds, streams and sea: their song, call, poetry.’
In responding to the poems, Sercombe’s camera explores the clifftops and bays overlooking the Manukau Harbour, a narrow residential street which weaves through the bush and the interior of Haresnape House. The house is a mid-century modern masterpiece designed and built by the architect Bill Haresnape in the 1950s, set in 10 acres of unspoilt bush overlooking Wood Bay.
Ron Riddell often performs his poetry alongside composer and cellist Raeul Pierard. Together they create an intimate dialogue, with the rhythm, tone and sentiment of each poem perfectly reflected in Pierard’s musical response. For the video poem, the three artists have sought to create a three-way dialogue, as verse, melody and image unfold in homage to this very special corner of New Zealand.
First screened at the Awakening to Timelessness live show, Titirangi Theatre, Auckland, 2024.
Songs of Vanishing 5 mins 47 secs UHD Video 2024
The film begins as a study of the movements of fog through a range of landscapes at dawn and dusk. As it progresses, the fog becomes witness to a quiet celebration of nature, involving shadowy figures in a surreal forest world. The poem acts as the voice in the forest and the land, responding to its changing moods as the fog moves through it. Inspired by e.e. cummings’ playful and innovative use of word layout, each line of the text explores different ways of co-existing with the landscape in the film frame, appearing and vanishing like the fog it describes.
Martin Sercombe’s songs of vanishing startlingly conveys the simulacral nomansland of this, our digital era. The poem decisively uses the artificial technologies of said era to both express and critique their ambivalent implications. Its title, songs of vanishing, is already a call to both beauty and loss, and the strange, uncanny beauty to be found in loss. In the film, we are presented with dream images of a shadowy, natural world generated by AI, with words appearing upon the screen that opaquely align with its visualizations. These words and images are nothing but virtual shadows of a real, referential thing: no object, only dream.
In a world where environmental degradation and synthetic disappearance lays waste to the quality of experience of all creatures, this message is delivered profoundly through its umbrous image-constructions, and without direct address by way of the word. This is why songs of vanishing haunts the viewer. Tyler Tesolin, Co-director Aotearoa Poetry Film Festival
The soundtrack by Manuel Gordiani was selected from the Free Music Archive.
Screened at Aotearoa Poetry Film Festival 2024 and the 12th Ó Bhéal Winter Warmer Poetry Festival 2024.
The Dance of Light UHD Video 10 mins 10 secs 2024
This experimental film explores the primal and transcendent nature of dance, set in a series of interconnected land and cityscapes. It is structured as a kaleidoscope of moments; each a self-contained vignette exploring another style of performative ritual or dance.
The journey begins on a conventional theatrical stage, where dancers perform before animated neon backdrops. As the film progresses, it sheds the constraints of the known, moving into the twilight of a dense forest where the boundaries between performer and environment blur. The trees, swirling fog and shards of sunlight each take part in the evolving transformations. The setting then shifts to an abandoned silo, a relic of industrial decay, where surreal ritual reverberates against cold, lifeless walls.
The city of Prague offers a further stark contrast, becoming the stage for playful expressions of contemporary rhythmic dance. Here, ritual adopts another form, as cyborg like creatures perform within the city’s labyrinthine architecture.
The film culminates in a foggy marshland, a liminal space where robed figures gather in silent reverence around holy egg-shaped relics. This location is a place out of time, where the sacred and the surreal coexist, and the act of worship becomes the dance, ancient and ineffable.
The imagery throughout the film was generated using Midjourney AI. These images were extended into motion using Runway and Kling AI. Finally, the footage was upscaled to UHD using VideoProc Converter AI. The soundtrack remixes a series of electroacoustic soundscapes by La Faena, El Wud and D.R. published on The Free Music Archive.
I was completely mesmerized by the beauty and the creativity. I loved all the different locations and dancers, and the soundtrack was amazing! I found myself trying to hear and understand all the whispering voices. I think the best word I can come up with is “exquisite”…. Sherri Anne (Flickr Photographer)
First screened at The Button Factory, Auckland 2024.
Passing Clouds UHD Video 6 mins 42 secs 2024
Poet and author Ron Riddell suggested this project as a means to illustrate his forthcoming book of haiku Passing Clouds, inspired by his travels through New Zealand, Colombia and Spain. In the foreword to the book he writes: “Writing haiku refreshes, it provides light, air, breathing space. The haikuist or haiguin can take his time; focus on details of landscape, of life, from his bedroom window or whilst taking an afternoon walk among tall, leafy trees. A haiku is a sudden joy, an awakening, an epiphany.” Inspired by these words, Sercombe used AI to visualise moving image variants of the haiku: dramatic moments that unfold their micro-stories in 10 second clips. The poems and video clips are then juxtaposed side by side.
“Each moment is a marvel of beauty and symbolism. Fantastic composition.” Ston Miller, Photographer
First screened at The Button Factory, Auckland in September 2024.
Meredith and the Lions UHD Video 2 mins 20 secs 2024
This is a short poetry film inspired by a piano solo by Circus Marcus. The original imagery was generated in Midjourney, the video was generated in Kling AI, then extended in Premiere Pro.
Comments from viewers on Flickr:
“Superb combination musically and visually.” Will Bubba
“Great use of AI – I really like how you play with the different themes and combine them coherently! We are living in a storm of change on the AI front.” Kai Sairanen
Quietude UHD Video 2 mins 25 secs 2024
Quietude is a poem film that captures a journey through the twilight of an ancient forest. The camera drifts slowly and meditatively over intricate details; leaves quivering in a soft breeze or a shaft of moonlight piercing dense fog. Accompanied by a sparse piano piece by Serge Quadrado, the film suggests that, in observing nature with patience and reverence, we can glimpse the divine in the most simple, transient moments.
Comments from viewers on Flickr:
“Your creativity has no limits. This is a beautiful example of incredible images paired with calming inspirational words and well chosen music.” Vera Weist
“Lovely. Images and imagery collaborate exquisitely. I’m really liking the “yearning fern” especially. Pushing the boundaries ever further Martin, very well done indeed.” Tim aka TeeJayPh
Glistening UHD Video 5 mins 50 secs 2024
This film explores the transient beauty of water in motion. AI generated imagery simulates the effect of animating moving water with a macro lens and/or a slow motion camera with an extreme shutter speed. The film has had over 35,000 views on Youtube, making it my most popular film to date!
“This is one of the most excruciatingly beautiful things I have seen in a very long time and certainly in the AI space. Congratulations.” Roland Chadwick, Composer
“A very worthwhile use of AI, unlike much I’ve seen. I could watch this for hours.” Rich Saunders
The north sings stillness 7 mins 54 secs UHD Video 2025
This poetry film is a collaboration between film maker Martin Sercombe and classical guitarist Roland Chadwick. It is a portrait of a fictional land in the Arctic Circle, inhabited by sea birds, polar bears and arctic hares. The film begins in the heart of midwinter and gradually transitions to early spring. The struggle of life’s battle with the harsh winter elements is tempered by the beauty of ice in all its forms. The improvised guitar work forms an intimate dialogue with this unfolding drama set in the far north.
Screened at Nature & Culture – Poetry Film Festival 2025.
“Flipping heck, Martin, that’s next level fantastic. Spot on imagery, words and music too. Inspirational indeed. You’re really on the cutting edge of this stuff. Really good.” Tim (Flickr)
“A masterpiece , stunning , eerie and the unbelievably fitting music.” Gali Stein
Song of the Night 3 mins 45 secs UHD Video 2025
Song of the Night is a short animated poem, following Wishbone the Cat on his search through the city of Barcelona in search of his friend, the poet. It was made with a young audience in mind.
The images were generated in Midjourney, adjusted in Photoshop and animated in Kling. The music is by Serge Quadrado.
invasion 3 mins 30 secs UHD video 2025
A poetry film collaboration between myself, poet Edna Heled, and the music ensemble Sky Circle.
Migration 5 mins 14 secs UHD Video 2025
A video inspired by Microchasm, a track from the ambient album, A Storytelling of Rooks by Sky Circle. It tells the story, without words, of a people fleeing ecological catastrophe.
“A deeply philosophical animation and poetry. The branches are like lines of verse, the movement like emotions and thoughts — your video is a treasure trove of inspiration and ideas..” Layla Fudashkina, Film Maker
One Thousand Voices 13 mins 55 secs UHD Video 2025
One Thousand Voices is a film poem, a fractured elegy shaped by memory, dislocation, and a yearning for belonging. Through Paris Whitehead’s layered and intimate spoken text, the protagonist moves through landscapes that offer both solace and sorrow. Nature becomes a charged terrain where absence echoes and memory takes root.
The spoken text finds its visual counterpart in Martin Sercombe’s intimate cinematography, which traces the South Island’s elemental geography: the limestone headlands of Te Hapu, the shadowed fern bush of Hokitika and tidal mud flats cloaked in mist. Each location becomes an emotional cartography, mapping internal states through the language of wind, water, rock, and light.
This three-way dialogue is completed by Paul McLaney’s immersive soundscape, composed from field recordings and live instrumentation. His score flows organically with the imagery and voice, blending breath, birdsong, and echoic tones into a sonic weave that holds the work’s emotional resonance in tension and release.
In essence, the film is a meditation on loss, ancestry and the fragile threads that bind memory to landscape. Quiet, surreal and unresolved, it speaks of the many voices that inhabit the natural world and the human need to follow them home.
“In my junior year in college I by chance saw La Jetée in a dorm cafeteria. I was moved more than I’d been by any other movie I’d ever seen. I feel the same about this piece. The four elements are braided together in a way that sends shivers. It has greater meaning than any of the individual elements alone. Very fine work. Thank you for this.” Glen Bledsoe, Photographer
Serenade 6 mins 53 secs UHD Video 2025
Serenade is a watercolour animation inspired by a poem by Ron Riddell, from his chapbook Songs for Dylan. To quote Ron Riddell, the poem is an ode to ”the Dionysian troubadour, the tragic poet-genius who dies fully-empowered, young and in exile.. He was a master wordsmith; a craftsman-alchemist-metaphysician.”
The soundtrack music was composed by Mark Lingard.
“I almost always like what you do, but this time you have outdone yourself; the atmosphere and the colour of the images are wonderful, the music, the narration – precious.” Guillermo Jano López, Photographer
The Old Path 4 mins 55 secs UHD Video 2025
This cinepoem is a collaboration with Ron Riddell, featuring his poem The Old Path, from his chapbook Palabra Ancestral. It tells of a journey home through the Waitakere bush in West Auckland. The imagery was captured on a Nikon DSLR using triple exposure macro techniques, then enhanced using AI.
The soundtrack music was composed by Mark Lingard.
“Once again, a truly magnificent piece. The intricate realism captured in the birds and plants is remarkable, and it’s as if the quiet presence of nature gently rises from the image itself. I found myself holding my breath, completely drawn in.” Minoru Karamatsu, Photographer
Tides of the Everyday 6 mins 45 secs UHD Video 2025
Tides of the Everyday is a cine-haiku: a visual diary of fleeting encounters with people, nature and the luminous textures of Rarotonga island life. It unfolds as a sequence of long shots, each accompanied by a haiku which acts as an oblique or lyrical comment. These encounters shy away from the obvious attractions of a tourist destination, selecting instead intimate moments which the casual observer might miss: a dog sleeping in the sun, an old woman sweeping her yard or the moving shadows of palm trees at the edge of the lagoon.
Filmed on an iPhone, the series embraces the intimacy and immediacy of the handheld lens. The small device becomes a pocket journal, equally suited to spontaneous capture and painterly abstraction. Ambient, environmental sound is also central: waves, insects, footsteps, voices and distant music forming a spontaneous score of daily life.
“Of course, Martin-san’s emotionally rich photography is wonderful—but I’m truly amazed that such clear, crisp images could be captured with just a smartphone.” Minoru Karamatsu
“Simply calming and serene. You captured moments in Heaven…” Denise (Flickr)
Martin Sercombe 