Spotlighting Californian artist Emma Fineman in St Ives, Cornwall, director Camilla Greenwell captures the creation process behind her latest work for short film The Genesis Project.

Communicated through paint and poetry at the iconic Porthmeor Studios, Fineman retells the story of Genesis and the Garden of Eden from the perspective of queerness, the divine feminine and ecology – drawing upon her own prose, excerpts on the erotic written by Audre Lorde, and poetic verse from the 'Book of the Serpent'.

Offering an in-depth exploration of human connection, The Genesis Project explores Fineman’s painterly world as her first fully immersive painting takes shape around her – envisioned as a sanctuary in its final form. Between the studio and the cliffs of Porthmeor, Greenwell and Fineman engage in conversation about queerness, relationships, death, and living in the memory of loved ones they have lost, entering a surreal space that mirrors the nature of the painting itself through movement and poetic storytelling.