KADIST Dialogues: Films by Enar de Dios Rodríguez & Xavier Marrades

Followed by a short conversation with Xavier Marrades!

Join us for a screening of two short films that look to the sky to find metaphors for the vast and atmospheric forces shaping our present. 

In Above All (2025), Enar de Dios Rodríguez turns the air itself into a site of inquiry, where carbon, drones, and chemicals trace the entanglement of climate crisis, technology, and power. Murmurations (2025), by Xavier Marrades, finds poetry in the synchronized flight of starlings over Catalonia, mirroring the rhythms of longing, illness, and collective resistance. Both films transform the sky into a space of reflection, where memory and movement reveal systems of control as well as gestures of care. Together, they invite us to consider what hovers above. Each film has a distinct voice, but set in relation, they come into dialogue.

Above All (2025) 
25:44 min

From carbon dioxide trapping heat to drones enabling remote warfare, or chemicals raining onto fields, the film reveals how air has become a charged site. Above All is a lens through which to examine the climate crisis, technology, and neocolonial ambition. Part of a broader series on airspace, the work explores the histories, policies, regulations, and infrastructures that shape it, as well as the environmental and anthropocentric changes unfolding across this vertical plane.

Murmurations (2025)
21:28 min

Filmed from over 60 rooftops in his hometown in Catalunya during the COVID-19 lockdown, Murmurations captures the fluid, unpredictable, and collective aerial formations of starling swarms, known as murmurations. That sound becomes a metaphor for intimacy and collective care. Structured around WhatsApp voice messages exchanged between the artist and his lover in Brazil, the film traces longing, illness, and resilience, interweaving personal narrative with his HIV diagnosis and archival footage from the ACT UP Video Collection at the New York Public Library.