LONDON.- The Whitechapel Gallery presents four new works for Artists’ Film International, a seasonal programme of film, video and animation chosen by partner cultural organisations from around the world.

A recent film commission by Argentinian artist Eduardo Basualdo (selected by Fundación PROA in Buenos Aires, Argentina) titled Eyelids (2014), documents an art installation in Austria of two semi-transparent curtains on the interior and exterior of a window. Moving at different moments, the curtains only offer a glimpse of what lies beyond when they lift at the same time. The artist was interested in how ‘delicate glass is enough for two completely different worlds to exist only millimetres away’.

Part of an ongoing collaboration between Canadian and Norwegian artists Tanya Busse and Emilija Ŝkarnulytė (selected by Tromsø Kunstforening in Tromsø, Norway),the film Hollow Earth (2013) examines the dramatic changes to the arctic landscape due to the extraction of natural resources. The work combines archive footage, research material and landscape shots of active drilling sites in Norway and Sweden, presenting them conversely as tourist destinations associated with untamed wilderness and highly contested geopolitical territories at the forefront of debates on climate change.

Selected by Ballroom Marfa in Texas, American filmmaker Brigid McCaffrey’s Paradise Springs (2013) follows geologist Ren Lallatin’s unique and intimate relationship to the Mojave Desert in the southwest states of the USA.

For years she has lived in and travelled through the desert, studying its geological formations. The film shows Lallatin’s interactions with the natural world while she discusses her life, research and ongoing stand against land regulation and privatisation.

Long Hair, ShortIdeas (2014) is the third in a series of essay films by Indian filmmaker Pallavi Paul (selected by Project 88 in Mumbai, India) and looks at the role of the ‘revolutionary wife’. Exploring the life ofIndian revolutionary poet Vidrohi’s wife,the film looks at the relationship between her intimate domestic life after her husband left her and her involvement with radical political movements in 1970s India.