In The Flame We Reveal Ourselves is a short documentary essay film about climate anxiety, rendered solely through music and image. The interplay of music (by musical collaborators, Afterlands), and visual storytelling explores our desire to protect the environment while paradoxically allowing its destruction.
A woman in a red dress traverses an island. Her journey is not only through a physical landscape, but through layers of time and history. She witnesses the devastation of human impact during the Anthropocene. Through an eco-feminist lens, the film explores the dialectical tension between our profound love for the natural world and our collusion in its destruction.
The documentary essay invites the audience to consider the intricate connections between land, history, and gender and to recognise that in the flames of destruction, we must collectively find the embers of hope.
Director: Virginia Heath
Producer: Grant Keir
Music: by Afterlands (Rick Anthony & David McAulay) with Jill Lorean
Protagonist: Carina Birrell
Director of Photography: Thomas Hogben
Editor: Stella Heath Keir
Sound Recordist: Pete Smith
Sound Design: David McAulay
Picture Post: BSQUARED
Colourist: Colin Brown
Sound Post House: Blazing Griffin
Rerecording Mixer: John Cobham
Made with the support of Sheffield Hallam University Research and Innovation Fund
in collaboration with Faction North Ltd
Copyright 2025