Sailing a Sinking Sea
Sailing a Sinking Sea
| 14 March 2015 (USA)
Sailing a Sinking Sea Trailers

Sailing a Sinking Sea is a feature-length experimental documentary exploring the culture of the Moken people of Burma and Thailand. The Moken are seafaring people and one of the smallest ethnic minority groups in Asia. Wholly reliant upon the sea, their entire belief system, education, and economic and physical development revolve around water. Sailing a Sinking Sea illuminates the Moken lifestyle through recorded traditional music, folklore and conversations with the Moken people. Through intimate and dynamic cinematography and audio recordings, Sailing a Sinking Sea weaves a visual and aural tapestry of Moken mythologies and present-day practices.

Reviews
Enrique Ramirez

Olivia Wyatt's "Sailing A Sinking Sea" is one of the best documentaries I've seen in recent years. Wyatt trains her ethnographic eye on the seafaring Moken, a small, yet ethnically diverse seafaring people living on boats and islands along the Andaman Sea. Filled with ravishing, stunning cinematography (and a haunting soundtrack as well), Wyatt's film is more than an "experimental" film: it is a generous, lovely piece that points to new directions in documentary film making. Viewers may be quick to make comparisons to Chris Marker's "Sans Soleil," yet Wyatt's film is more reminiscent of something like W.G. Sebald's "Rings of Saturn" or John McPhee's "The Control of Nature." Highly recommended.

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