New York-based multimedia artist Meshakai Wolf traveled to Colorado on 21 August 2017 to film what the media were calling the “Great American Eclipse”—the first coast-to-coast eclipse to hit the US for almost a hundred years.

“A solar eclipse is like a condensed, sped-up version of a regular lunar cycle,” says Wolf. “It feels sudden yet deliberate, fresh yet ancient. It is an occultation of our planet’s life source—an impermanent state of cyclical transition between life and death.” 

Through lens refractions and light flares Wolf turns a momentous astronomical event viewed by millions of people into an intimate parley between the viewer and the universe. The Super 8 images coalesce alongside a suspenseful soundscape scored on a four-track recorder by Cole Alexander and Zumi Rosow of the Atlanta garage rock band Black Lips.

Meshakai Wolf collaborated with Atlanta-native author Benjamin Solomon to write a poem as a creative annexe to this film:

Eclipse (A Solar Wax & Wane)

And then there was the end,
the definite and, 
the definitive. 

The apocalyptic, 
end of times,
blotting out of life,
of light,
of feel.

A trembling life,
still and,
still trembling.