Dir. Kaori Oda | Japan, Mexico | 2019 | 75min

Shot along Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula, Cenote is a sensorial, immersive non-fiction work that explores the eponymous geological sinkholes, themselves the remnants of a celestial collision between a shower of comets and the earth’s surface. In ancient Mayan cosmology, these water sources were believed to open portals between this world and the afterlife.

Where Underground investigates the play of darkness and light within the gamas, Cenote dwells on the uncanny encounter between water, sunlight, and the suspended weightlessness of filming beneath the surface. Composed of underwater iPhone X footage alongside Super 8 observations of the surrounding community – their festivities and ceremonies – Cenote captures a convergence of geological accident, tradition, and myth that carves out a distinct human world set against a larger, more mysterious cosmos.

Curated by Cici Peng, Sine Screen. Followed by an in-person Q&A with Kaori Oda.

With thanks to Daiwa Foundation for making this retrospective possible.