Project Detail

Unseen: The Lives of Looking

Dryden Goodwin

Synopsis

’Unseen: The Lives of Looking’ focuses on four individuals with a distinct relationship to looking - an eye surgeon, a planetary explorer, a human rights lawyer and an artist/filmmaker. Told through Dryden Goodwin’s closely observed drawings, camera work and multilayered soundtrack, it explores different scales, forms and reasons for looking, in a poetic and metaphysically charged journey. Revealing the empathy and dexterity of an eye surgeon, working with the fragile human eye; the quest of a NASA planetary explorer to decode the cosmos and find evidence of life on Mars; and the scrutiny of the British government, by a human rights lawyer, in extraordinary rendition, drone attack and mass surveillance cases. The film’s perspectives range from minute details to panoramic expanses, building an atmospheric and sensual matrix around its subjects. Goodwin includes fleeting vignettes of strangers and a brief focus on his father and son, highlighting the tension in his work between intimacy and anonymity. The film considers both the physical act of looking and how we perceive the world around us: how we contemplate the known and the unknown, the personal and the remote and the imaginative leaps taken to reveal what might be concealed or out of sight.

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Details

Year: 2015
Type of project: Features
Running time: 90 mins
Format: 4K video
Director: Dryden Goodwin 1st Feature
Producer: Jo Cole, Sarah Caddy
Co-Producer: Dryden Goodwin Projects, Red Bee Media
Executive Producer: Gareth Evans
Editor: Dryden Goodwin, Jo Cole
Screenwriter: Dryden Goodwin
Director of Photography: Dryden Goodwin
Sound: Dryden Goodwin
Composer: Dryden Goodwin
Principal cast: Prof Sir Peng Tee Khaw, Prof Sanjeev Gupta, Rosa Curling, Jeffrey Goodwin, Fynn Cole-Goodwin
Researchers: Jo Cole, Imran Perretta
Production managers: Harriet Masterson, Sukey Richardson
Production, Camera and Sound Assistants: Brada Barassi, Imran Perretta
Sound Mastering: Tony Perretta
Production Lawyer: Guy Swillingham
Production accountants: Perlin Franco Ltd
Funded by: Royal Museums Greenwich, Arts Council England, Wellcome Trust, Red Bee Media