Ed Sayers, director and founder of the annual Super 8 competition and community called straight 8, convenes 40 collaborators in 25 countries across five continents for Super Nature, a collective ode to the planet shot entirely on Super 8. Released by BFI Distribution, the film is screening in the U.K. and Ireland this month, including several London showtimes.
A mosaic of voices, close to home
Rather than travel the globe, Sayers “subverts the traditional documentarian approach by stitching together stories of people and creatures directly from their homes.” Participants include lauded photographers Gideon Mendel and Ami Vitale, who also founded Vital Impacts, alongside communities like the Enawene Nawe tribe in Brazil. Sayers invited several filmmakers from straight 8, and Greenpeace introduced his team to folks in the organization’s network, too.
“I wanted them to feel very free. I made sure they were tuned into the spirit of what the film was trying to achieve, putting precious intimate moments and thoughts on a pedestal,” he tells Colossal. “Many had never used Super 8 before so we sent them cameras and taught them how to use them on video calls.”
Keeping the work cohesive meant careful assembly. “It was important that as an ensemble the stories came across as more than the sum of their parts,” Sayers says. “In the end, you’re watching one immersive story made and voiced by a chorus of people whom you meet and see in the film, captured on Super 8 just like all the animals and environments in the whole film.” The edit moves between underwater, aerial, and terrestrial scenes and includes glimpses of the filmmakers themselves, with narration that threads each frame into a larger portrait. Eleven languages and dozens of accents run throughout, underscoring the rootedness of each contribution.
Analog attention in a digital era
In an age of AI and frictionless digital technologies, Sayers leans into the intention required by film. “With Super 8 film, the roll only lasts a couple of minutes before it runs out, and there’s a cost to it. So suddenly you’re studying your subject and waiting for what you think it is a great moment, with the right light, before pulling the trigger,” he says. “Looking at your subject—be it a grasshopper or a glacier—with the eye or through an old camera with vintage glass is very different to whipping out your iPhone and taking 20 shots.” The trailer opens with one filmmaker reflecting, “It’s like it resets something in your brain. You feel part of things again.”
Images shared with the project capture a Silver-washed Fritillary butterfly at purple flowers, Dice Rose carrying a Super 8 camera through a cactus-dotted desert in golden light, an Indo-pacific Bottlenose Dolphin underwater, and barnacle geese in flight—each filmed on Super 8, complete with flares and film grain.
Super Nature gathers these fragments into a single, immersive story—and for audiences in the U.K. and Ireland this month, that story arrives on the big screen via BFI Distribution.
