The Year of the Snake

The visual Umwelt of a mythic, chimerical bird-snake.
Imagine what the world looks like through the eyes of the plumed serpent.
What would happen if you add up the optical sensitivities of a bird that can see into the ultraviolet and a snake that can sense infrared. You could get something as in this animated time-lapse shot in full-spectrum, a peek into more-than-human sight.
The panorama shows the North Sea, dunes and an ominous but beautiful - technological sublime- landscape. These are the blast furnaces of Tata Steel IJmuiden that slowly turn in unsettling false colors. Most people know false color photography from NASA/ESA satellite imagery. It is normally used to detect forest fires, deforestation, floods or monitor crop health and earth's carbon cycle from spacecraft. Colors are assigned to different wavelengths that human eyes cannot normally see, invoking a sort of extraterrestrial, alien viewpoint.
The winged snake is a powerful mythological creature in human imagination all over the world. From Mesoamerica (Mayan Quetzalcoatl), Middle East (Hebrew Seraph) to China (Tengshe flying dragon). Even Nietzsche's Zarathustra was accompanied by the inseparable serpent-and-eagle. In one all-encompassing embrace from earth to sky, in search of a liberating view, beyond God's eye.
Remarkable fact: The first bullsnake (cincuate in Mexico) in Holland was spotted in the dunes of IJmuiden in 2012, not far from Tata Steel, probably released from captivity.

Changes are happening in the high Amazon cloud forest, and a snake speaks out.

The requerimiento was a declaration by the Spanish monarchy of Castile's divine right to take possession of the New World's territories and to subjugate, exploit and, if necessary, fight the native inhabitants.
REQUERIMIENTO is an experimental 16mm short film that explores the aesthetics of a mythological/postcolonial space-time and the different trajectories of its original creatures and materialities.
Following a symbolical snake and a specific meteorite's fragment, REQUIRIMIENTO develops an interwoven narration questioning the relationship of the humanity's relationship with nonhuman beings through different epochs and cultures.

Wildres Wood, an Indigenous biologist, explores the mysterious Río Plátano. – Anita Raswant

Is it because they slither? Or because some are venomous? Or perhaps it is our religious heritage that makes snakes terrifying creatures? While the answer is far from obvious, one thing is clear: many of us are afraid of them, and some are even phobic. Using various cinematic forms, the filmmakers of this documentary humorously explore the question of our fear of snakes and attempt to debunk the many misconceptions surrounding these misunderstood creatures. By questioning humanity's relationship with nature, the film helps us better understand these animals, in the hopes of fostering a better coexistence with them.

A rush of images, the beating of drums: awaken Itzcóatl, the 'Obsidian Serpent'!

A python slithers and curls over the abandoned control room of Chernobyl's sister, the Ignalina Nuclear Power Plant, its radioactive core an unleashed monster that will slither through time for a million years. From Etruscan ruins and sunken cities to the most modern of underground repositories, director Emilija Škarnulytė follows our attempts to bury the immortal. Addressing the epochal effects of nuclear technology on all levels, Burial follows the cycle of power, an eternal return, another serpent eating its tail.

Alguén me chamou Serpe Negra explores the tortuous path that memories and dreams take in our mind. Thanks to the texture of analogue hand-painted animation, the film is an invitation to an oneiric universe made of loose connections and revised spatial dimensions. Filmmaker Borja Santomé Rodríguez takes us with him on a journey made of images that play with love and adventure, childhood curiosities and adult desires, and in which the ultimate reward is to get lost.
– Rebecca De Pas

Finding access to the deeper levels and truths of a stretch of land via the surreal, the digitally alienated. Thus is the aim behind Lukas Marxt's Imperial Irrigation, whereby digital surrealism is anchored in an experimental documentary intent, while text and sound levels snarl the multiple layers of action thus continually decentering the narrative. Starting point for this complex and vibrant territorial study is California's Salton Sea; close to where Marxt's Imperial Valley (cultivated run-off) already led. The visual approach to this slowly drying up lake and its highly checkered past takes place through various types of images—most of which have been implanted with elaborately placed, willful moments of alienation. As though the intangibility of the scenery offered could not possibly be encountered via veristic means, the shots are digitally chopped, extended by time stops, permeated by undefinable MacGuffins—and tremble erratically owing to air reflections that arise when filming from a great distance.
Marxt does not exclude himself from this quasi-colonial inspection of a landscape. His cowboy boots, his snakeskin hat, and his hanging out at slot machines or in the car repeatedly intervene as idiosyncratic presences in the flow of images. The artist Julia Scher emphatically narrates a history of Salton Sea based on a text by William L. Fox recapitulating various discursive anchoring moments. At the same time, subtly woven sound elements, most notably insistent passages by the musician Jung An Tagen, for their part, "alter-medially" outdo the "insane sense" of the events. What emerges is a disturbing portrait of a bit of the Anthropocene, whose ongoing catastrophic course, the film sums up nicely. (Christian Höller)

A rebellious young snake rescuer in South India longs for his independence and to reconnect with his estranged father as he takes up the dangerous family business.
When Surya Keerthi was born on July 28th, 2000 in a roadside public clinic in the South Indian city of Mysore, it was anything but coincidental that this momentous occasion took place on World Conservation Day. From the moment Surya entered this life, his destiny was laid out before him. His father, Snake Shyam, a legendary snake rescuer who spent his life relocating wild snakes from homes, more than 80,000 over the span of 30 years, was absent at the time of Surya's birth. A rescue call pulled him away not only from this important day but subsequent holidays, birthdays, family dinners and graduations. In fact, Surya rarely received his father's time and affection as a kid despite craving it deeply and asking for it often. Now, at 23-years-old, Surya weaves through traffic on his way from one rescue to another, feeling many of the same pressures from this around the clock job.Though he doesn't talk about it often, Surya is scared for his father. After having been bitten three times by venomous snakes, doctors warn that one more could be fatal for Shyam. His father's dedication to the wellbeing of Mysore and its urban wildlife is something Surya venerates, he shares this passion and dreams to expand their conservation efforts across India and the world. At the same time Surya feels conflicted about this thankless, financially unstable work. Will he be able to have his own family and provide for them financially and emotionally? He feels responsible to relieve the pressures from his father, even potentially saving his life. Perhaps snake rescuing, though it has been the driving force keeping them apart all of these years, just might be the very thing that brings them together.

Taming your fears, learn about animals only different but not so bad, a first step towards respect. How does a snake move? Why does it pull its tongue? Does it really have cool blood?

Every year, the Florida government calls upon the general public to compete in an invasive python removal contest in the Everglades in an attempt to save the threatened ecosystem. For ten grueling nights, an eclectic group of amateur hunters confront the dangerous terrain, nocturnal creatures and their own tiny demons. Meanwhile, one professional hunter leads the charge to undermine the competition, questioning what hides beneath the python mania gripping the 'glades.

Ouroboros is a symbol that is represented with an animal (generally of form or proximity to a serpent) that engulfs its own tail. It symbolizes the eternal effort, eternal struggle or useless effort; the cyclical nature of things. The eternal return that begins again despite the actions to prevent it.
From Nietzsche's texts about the Eternal Return (present in Thus Spoke Zarathustra and especially in the essay The Gay Science) the film project reflects on the History and the injustices that were on the events that took place in Mexico (October 1968). These events keep repeating and manifesting themselves in one way or another. History marks us and points out events with a distance as an unrepeatable past and that has no relation to our present. It is from a philosophical point of view that we reflect on what this means.
There is an allegory to the Mexican subway because it was part of the Mexican progress at that time as a symbol (even though its planning and construction began much earlier); the Mexican subway was inaugurated in 1969.
The film uses audios from a news interview to the Mexico City Mayor (1968) and Enrique Peña Nieto (President from 2012 to 2018) with a message about the Ayotzinapa case (2014). There are also manipulation audios from de candidates for the Presidency in Mexico (2018)

Claudia Chow lives for the rush—reckless rides, wild nights, and adrenaline-fueled chaos. But her mind is haunted by visions of a seductive Serpent Woman, whispering, "Your body is my body." When a high-speed crash sends Claudia spiraling between reality and illusion, her nights grow darker and more unhinged. The Serpent Woman's voice becomes impossible to ignore, leading Claudia on a journey of desire, destruction, and transformation.

Here are a sequence of microscopy videos that depict C.elegans doing the following actions: mating partners with fluorescent labelled body wall muscles; omega turn of an adult worm; fluorescent imaging of neuromodulator release during mating; mating partners imaged in bright field; mating partners imaged with phase contrast microscopy; roaming adult animal; fluorescent labelled animals of varying age; previous animals in bright field; fluorescent imaging of olfactory neuron activity; comet tail traces of chemotaxing worms.

A C. elegans worm bends soft high-aspect-ratio micropilars with its tail. By measuring the deflection of each micropillar structure, we can quantify the muscle force of the worm.