One Big Eye

Sobia Ahmad & Benny Shaffer

16mm film transferred to 4K, B/W, 18 mins, 2024

One Big Eye is a hand-processed 16mm film shot at Pando, an ancient grove of aspen trees that extends across 106 acres in south-central Utah. Seemingly 47,000 individual trees, it is unified by a single, interconnected root system, making it a ‘forest of one.’ Believed to be over 10,000 years old, Pando is the largest and heaviest known organism on land. The footage was processed at home with an eco-friendly, coffee-based developer that leaves unpredictable inscriptions and traces on the film’s emuil, at times creating visually abstract and speckled images. This materially focused film practice offers an opportunity to rethink ecological entanglements between humans and a more-than-human world.