The Forest

An experimental portrait of overlapping histories, extractive capitalism, rewilding, and the tension between nature and its representation—all within the boundaries of Tijuca National Park in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

  • Brooks Dierdorff
    Director
  • Brooks Dierdorff
    Writer
  • Ian Clark
    Editor
    Rad Dad, A Morning Light
  • Matt Scott Baker
    Sound Design
  • Ian Clark
    Producer
    Rad Dad, A Morning Light
  • Caroline Filgueira
    Key Cast
  • Gabriel Sales
    Key Cast
  • Project Title (Original Language):
    A Floresta
  • Project Type:
    Documentary, Experimental
  • Runtime:
    16 minutes 11 seconds
  • Completion Date:
    April 3, 2024
  • Production Budget:
    6,000 USD
  • Country of Origin:
    Brazil
  • Country of Filming:
    Brazil
  • Language:
    English, Portuguese
  • Shooting Format:
    Digital
  • Aspect Ratio:
    16:9
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    Yes
  • Student Project:
    No
Director Biography - Brooks Dierdorff

Brooks Dierdorff is an artist exploring the ways media like photography and video shape our cultural imagination of environmental collapse. His work includes a range of methodologies such as photo-based sculptures, installation, video, appropriating images from commercial and archival sources, and experimental documentary filmmaking. This expanded photographic practice often explores new ways of seeing - staging encounters with photographs that challenge their status as neutral documents. His work serves as an interface between political, ecological, and artistic spheres.

He has exhibited his work both nationally and internationally at galleries that include Amos Eno in Brooklyn, New York; The Los Angeles Center for Digital Art; The Photographic Center Northwest in Seattle; High Desert Test Sites in Joshua Tree, California; The Florida Prize in Contemporary Art at The Orlando Museum of Art; the Ulrike Hamm Gallery in Bissendorf, Germany; the Czong Institute for Contemporary Art in South Korea; and The New Gallery in Calgary, Canada.

His work has been written about in The New Yorker Magazine, The Daily Mail, Lenscratch, Feature Shoot, Aint-Bad, and the Orlando Sentinel among others. His work has been collected by the Nevada Museum of Art, the Czong Institute for Contemporary Art, and the Ely Center for Contemporary Art.

Brooks received his BA from the University of California, San Diego in 2007 and his MFA from the University of Oregon in 2012. Currently he is an Associate Professor of Photography at the University of Central Florida in Orlando, Florida.

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