Clara Casian & Robin Richards
The Earth Asleep
2021
Digital presentation: BFI Player
Live score: HOME, Manchester
Directer Clara Casian
Composer Robin Richards
Producer Bren O’Callaghan
Producer | artist feature documentary
Commissioned by HOME, Arts Council England National Lottery Project Grants, The Great Britain Sasakawa Foundation
Supported by University of Salford
All images copyright Clara Casian
On Friday 11th March 2011, one of the most powerful earthquakes ever recorded took place 18 miles from the Oshika Peninsula of Japan. The Tōhoku earthquake and resulting tsunami killed over 15,000 people and caused a nuclear accident at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant - the worst such incident since the Chernobyl disaster in 1986.
The Earth Asleep is an artist feature film by director UK-based Romanian artist Clara Casian, with an original score by musician Robin Richards of the band Dutch Uncles. Together the pair travelled to the village of Otsuchi in remote North-East Japan, to document the experiences of local residents.
Ranging from a monk who tends a book which records the names of the dead, an elderly man who chose to remain by the ruins of his home lest his ancestral spirits be abandoned, a grandmother who raced to the local primary school as the waves surged towards shore, and the pilgrims who journey to a remote phone booth to ‘speak’ to the silent spirits of those who have passed over.
The result is a meditative elegy which addresses the ways in which our exposure to extreme live trauma in the form of rolling news and citizen reportage has resulted in an inability to process grief at a manageable, human scale.
The film is a companion work alongside Casian and Richard’s former collaboration, Birdsong – Stories from Pripyat, for which they visited Ukraine and the Chernobyl exclusion zone to create a unique exploration of impacted memory upon place.
The Earth Asleep premiered on BFI Player during global lockdown amidst the closure of cinemas on the exact date of the 10 year anniversary of the disaster, 11 March 2021. A premiere for audiences with live score once restrictions were lifted took place at HOME Manchester in September 2021, featuring Robin Richards (synthesisers, piano), Brendan Williams (synthesisers, percussion) and Margit van der Zwan (cello).
The Earth Asleep and Birdsong: Stories from Pripyat is available as a double soundtrack LP from Prah Recordings.
Trailer: The Earth Asleep (2021)
Single release: Haga (Robin RIchards)
