Our Century

The progress of technology and space travel is shown in all its visual vehemence in MER DAR. Peleshan made a collage in which anything involved in man’s quest to go beyond the planet Earth surges towards the spectator like an avalanche. Exploding spaceships, failed launchings, the seconds before the start, the distorted faces of cosmonauts, but also crashing planes and colliding trains; anything demonstrating the fragility and the strength of technology and man has been incorporated into MER DAR. Cut in 1990 from footage that Peleshan presented in a first version in 1982, the film almost knocks the spectator senseless in only half an hour. Therefore, the end of the documentary is an almost metaphysical apotheosis; images of explosions on the sun’s surface, accompanied by the sound of a human heart.