Our Life is Here – Film Screening
Join us for a free screening of the award-winning documentary Our Life is Here at the National Maritime Museum, Sat 24 January
Our Life is Here
The Film – 2025 | 1 HOUR 10 MINUTES 26 SECONDS | ENGLISH / MARSHALLESE | 25FPS
The Our Life is Here film is an arts drama / documentary filmed during the Cape Farewell expedition to five atolls in the Marshall Islands/Pacific Ocean – 12th August – 23rd August 2023.
Central to the expedition was a week-long residency at Bikini Atoll, the site of 23 USA atomic bomb detonations. The two crews of Marshallese leaders, an international team of artists and writers, a Marshallese youth team and film crew visited the site of Castle Bravo, the largest USA nuclear explosion ever. The Marshall Islands now face their second existential threat from climate change and rising sea levels – both unwanted ‘gifts’ from afar.
Our Life is Here reflects the resilience of the Marshallese people, whose homeland has been so torn apart by climate change and nuclear testing. Their story is relevant to all of us – implied in the ‘Our’ in the project title – as we all face uncertain futures, thanks to climate change for which we are responsible.
The onboard teams of artists created artistic and performance interventions filmed by our crew in the Marshall Islands and subsequently in their international studios. Swimming to the centre of Bravo Crater, diving on the seabed, creating Cyanotypes among the waves and shoreline, exploring Japanese wartime colonialism, projecting headline texts into the breaking waves and voicing narratives atop the brutalist atomic legacy structures. The artists took part in sailing a traditional ‘canoe’ around Bikini, reciting ancient wayfinding chants, collaborating with the climate activist Marshallese elders and youth who long for their old homeland, now forcefully abandoned due to radiation. It is a compelling story told in and among mind-bending beauty, twinned with a sense of loss and tragedy.
Shot in 4K Ultra High Definition, 24 fps, with spectacular drone footage and underwater cameras filming in and among the resident sharks, turtles and radiated shorelines, the sound score by Philip Glass reinforces that this piece is about now, the 21st century, in a world that is stressed to breaking point.
Our Life is Here narrates this thrilling expedition and is a call to arms and ecological care for us all.
Film Stills
Kõmij Mour Ijin/Our Life is Here exhibition
Reflections on nuclear testing and climate change in the Marshall Islands – a contemporary art exhibition at the National Maritime Museum. Runs until 14 June 2026.
Take Me To The River 2025
A free science day workshop held at Cape Farewell HQ The Watershed, as part of Dorchester Science Festival.
May Day! The Giant, the Well, and the Dorset Otter-Dragon in Garland Magazine
Veronica Strang celebrates the appearance of Sasha Constable’s Otter Dragon at the Dorset May Day festival.
Multi-Lingual Slam Poetry Competition
A climate inspired Poetry Slam Competition at Francis Holland School, Sloane Square, as part of the Creative Perspectives collaboration.
Take Me To The River 15th March 2025
Work with scientists and conservationists ‘in the field’ for a free, exciting, hands-on workshop at The WaterShed on Saturday 15th March.