"A sprawling tale of two Singapores, the short documentary Sandcastles draws connections between Singapore, Michigan - a 19th-century ghost town swallowed by sand following widespread deforestation - and the island country of Singapore, where rapid development and land reclamation has, for decades, been enabled by the importation of sand. More poetic exploration than call to action, the work surveys waterways, cycles of development and the transient nature of sand - deceptively sturdy over short timescales but, over decades, quite volatile."
"The Singaporean New York-based director Carin Leong's film moves between stunning overhead shots that capture the scale of the nation of Singapore's project, and intimate interviews with stakeholders in the two distant and, in most ways, quite disparate places. Through this construction, the sand dune becomes both an example of and a metaphor for humanity's precarious relationship with the natural world."
Sandcastles juxtaposes a 19th-century Michigan ghost town swallowed by sand with the island nation of Singapore, where decades of rapid development and land reclamation have relied on imported sand. The work presents waterways and cycles of development, emphasizing sand's deceptive short-term sturdiness and long-term volatility. The film alternates sweeping aerial images that reveal the scale of Singapore's project with intimate interviews of stakeholders in both locations. The film frames the sand dune as both a literal example and a metaphor for humanity's precarious relationship with the natural world, linking local histories to global resource flows.
Read at Aeon
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