DEAD SLOW AHEAD
Dir. Mauro Herce, 2015.
France, Spain. 74 min.
In Tagalog with English subtitles.

FRIDAY, JULY 5 – 10 PM
WEDNESDAY, JULY 10 – 7:30 PM
MONDAY, JULY 15 – 10 PM
SATURDAY, JULY 20 – 5 PM

Somewhere at sea, the Fair Lady and its Filipino crew are shipping bulk loads of grain across seascapes strewn with magnificent thunder storms and radiant shafts of sunlight. The men take breaks from their grueling work with attempts to call distant family members and partake in late-night, close-quarters karaoke parties. Meanwhile, the Fair Lady hums its own low unknowable tunes from deep within. Blueprints of the boat do not imply a lifeless vehicle, but an immense and delicate leviathan. As a catastrophe threatens this ecosystem’s flesh-metal symbiosis, we see that the beast not only holds lonely seamen, but nested landscapes far more alien than the world outside.

“Director Mauro Herce, principally known as a cinematographer, has sculpted an aesthetically aberrant documentary that, while grounded in the vicissitudes of uneasy labour, effectively partakes of science fiction … Not just another boat movie, DEAD SLOW AHEAD approximates the forgotten spaces of an Allan Sekula polemic as if corrupted by a David Lynch fever dream.” –Jay Kuehner