Meta Incognita: Missive II (2019)

• 80%
• 2019
• Alia Syed

Second part of a triptych of films that utilises different histories while focusing upon recognizable locations along and within the River Thames: from Millbank Prison (now the site of Tate Britain) to Second World War architecture on the Essex coastline. Linking places as far flung as the Canadian Northwest Passage and a cellular prison in the Andaman Islands, the three Missives create an extended narrative recited by the female captain of a ship returning to the Thames from the Canadian Arctic. Meta Incognita: Missive II is based on the exploits of the Elizabethan privateer turned explorer Martin Frobisher, who repeatedly sailed to the Canadian Arctic in search of the Northwest Passage. Set in a future where global warming has opened up the Northwest Passage to heavy/commercial/trans-continental cargo trade, the narrative follows a renegade ship's captain who has undertaken a commission to smuggle the last remnants of an unspecified natural resource.